Saturday 5 January 2013

Leslie Street Spit

Today Mira and I walked around the majority of the spit cleaning up on many year birds and running into familiar faces of the spit.


A Northern Shrike was in the usual area for the spit:

One large flock of Redpolls was in the same area where I saw large flocks 2 winters ago:

Trumpeter Swans seem to have increased in numbers - previously my record count for the location was 1 individual, today we saw at least 7!

In general, the area is great for waterfowl. I find that the bridge is the best spot for photographing waterfowl because there is a small area of open water and so the birds are forced to be closer to the trail than they would probably prefer to be. Common Goldeneyes are often in this area:

Eventually the cloud cover cleared away giving away to blue skies for the remainder of the afternoon:

A Great-horned Owl was a species I had never seen in Toronto before:

Bird highlights from the day were great looks at a single Short-eared Owl and massive flocks of Redhead.