Beware of Raptors

Today I joined the Kitchener-Waterloo Field Naturalists club on a search for hawks and other fun birds in the area.

Red-tailed Hawks appeared to be the most numerous at the start of the day, being the first hawk species to break the 10 individuals mark. Gradually Rough-legged Hawks started to catch up, and eventually had established a strong lead with 19 vs 14 individuals when we were well on our way home. Red-tailed Hawks tried to make a last ditch effort to re-claim their lead with an additional 5 being seen while we were in the last 2km stretch of the trip. But that wasn't enough as 1 RLHA venturing unusually close to the urban city managed to seal the deal with 20 RLHA to 19 RTHA!

Other interesting statistics from the day:
- I submitted my 600th ever sighting of a Mallard to eBird :p

- And submitted 298th checklist for the year already!

Many of the trees were iced over in the morning:

One of the main highlights from the day was a Lapland Longspur that I found feeding within a flock of Horned Larks and Snow Buntings. Unfortunately only a few people got to see any of the 3 LALOs that we found today.

Later down the road, a large flock of approx. 1000 Snow Buntings was fun to see. The flock also included a hand-full of Horned Larks and at least 1 Lapland Longspur.
Can you find the somewhat obstructed LALO in this photo:

Only 1 Northern Shrike today - at least it was patient enough to allow everyone to see it:

On our second try we found the Red-shouldered Hawk that has been over-wintering at Hawkesville since December 2003! That makes it the 10th consecutive year it has been hanging out in this area.

Red-shouldered Hawks have been known to live until 26 years of age. So this bird may be here for yet another few winters!

2012 - Part II

As promised, a summary of the second half of my 2012 birding year.

In early July I did a short trip to Alberta to visit Mira. We traveled around Edmonton and the nearby Rocky Mountains and turned up 124 species of birds.

The number of waterfowl there is astounding - it really is a duck factory!

There's only one thing nearly as awesome as the ocean. The mountains:

Gray-crowned Rosy-Finches were one of the highlights of the trip for me:

Shorebirds also breed in the province in large numbers. Black-necked Stilts were one of the species I wanted to see most:

Coming across Mountain Bluebirds at the treeline as we were hiking up one of the mountains was another awesome experience:

A month long trip to Newfoundland during shorebird season was great as I hadn't spent a good chunk of time there in the past few years, nor during shorebird season:

Fall birding in Waterloo was highlighted by a Greater White-fronted Goose:

And then another:

A large flock of 1000+ Turkey Vultures migrated through my neighbourhood over a 2 day period:

Then the gulls started showing up, including this 2nd winter Nelson's Gull:

Then back in Newfoundland to finish off the year.
The Yellow-breasted Chat living in my yard for over 2 weeks (and still there!) was certainly one of the highlights:

Purple Sandpiper was one of the last species I added to my year list:

Some quick and fun stats:
571 species seen/heard, across 1370 eBird checklists! 273 life birds.

Big miss: Rough-legged Hawk!!! Yes, I did not see that species in the year 2012...
Embarrassing.

I ended up biking 2397km last year

Bird is the Word

Did some birding in the Niagara region with Josh V, Dave B, and 6 other birders from the Guelph + Waterloo region.

We tallied over 60 species of birds, submitted 34 checklists, and saw 31196 individual birds (+/- 100000 birds).

Two main highlights for me were a heard only Fish Crow, and a distant Black Vulture.

No luck with the Slaty-backed Gull today - but there was an insane number of gulls on the river.

This hybrid had us confused - obviously has some Herring Gull in it (same size, only slightly darker mantle, pink legs). The darker mantle would point to Lesser Black-backed Gull or some were thinking it could be California Gull. I think the head shape is typical LBBG and others had a LBBG X HERG hybrid at the same location. May be a F2 generation (i.e. 1 grandparent is LBBG, other 3 are HERG).

What do you think?

4 Purple Sandpipers were an overdue first for my Ontario list:

Snowy Owl was pleasing the baiters:

At the Red-headed Woodpecker spot a certain someone decided to drive off the road. Took 6 men to push the truck back onto the road - but not after spraying us with mud in varying degrees: