I haven't been posting much due to school, but that doesn't mean I haven't been out birding.

I've seen 94 species so far in Ontario (since Saturday) which isn't so bad considering that 92 of those species have been in Waterloo county.

The Golden-winged Warbler remains the best bird so far but I will 'improve' on that soon ;)

I've seen 17 species of warbler in the county - I was hoping to see 16 species in Waterloo so I'm happy with 17. There's still a few easy ones I can get: Northern Parula and Hooded Warbler (I know a few locations where they breed in the county).

Some other good birds have been Scarlet Tanager, Tennessee Warbler, Veery, Swainson's Thrush...

This afternoon I visited Columbia Lake and was confused by a warbler in a tree about 20 meters away from me. The face looked unusually bright, I assumed it was a trick of the light. But as the bird moved around it became obvious that the face was in fact brighter than what I expected. Hermit Warbler came to mind but something wasn't right. Eventually I saw the yellow rump and flanks, and the fact that the bird was hanging out with a flock of Yellow-rumped Warblers gave things away.

It was a leucistic (i.e. partially albino) Yellow-rumped! Of course I didn't have my camera, but this photo is a very close match to the bird I saw:

Photo from here

This was my first leucistic warbler, so I was pretty excited! I'm pretty sure leucism is very rare in warblers.

Anyway, tomorrow I'll be making my way towards Pelee where I'll be hanging out for the weekend.

So I won't post until Monday, if at all.