I'll be covering the past 2 weeks in this blog post because I missed last week's post.
Last Week of February
A goal I set near the start of the year was to record at least 100 species by the end of February, on the 23rd I accomplished just that! The 100th bird species for the HSA Big Year was a Common Grackle; two of them actually! My mom and I saw these with a whole bunch of Red-winged Blackbirds along Sixteen Mile Creek while driving down to Oakville Harbour.
The next day George, Luke and I took a trip outside the HSA to Peterborough & Hastings county. We chased a Boreal Chickadee coming to a feeder and a Barrow's Goldeneye on the Trent River; we saw both of our targets. As a bonus, I spotted a Common Goldeneye x Hooded Merganser (hybrid) swimming in the river with a few Common Mergansers.
That same day, while on the way back to Guelph, my mom met up with us in Milton and together we went to Kelso CA in Halton. Awaiting geese to come back from the fields to roost at the reservoir, we spotted a Belted Kingfisher flying right by us! It eventually landed and perched on a small log sticking out of the water.
Sunday morning, my mom and I got out to Sedgewick Forest in search of overwintering species like Hermit Thrush, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, and Yellow-rumped Warbler which had been reported previously in the last month. We were able to locate the Yellow-rumped Warbler foraging by the open stream near some green vegetation. Places like Sedgewick with some sort of water treatment plant and a small woodlot nearby are great places to check regularly during the winter months as they provided warmth and food like bugs which can be tough to find when its cold.
The rest of the week I spent birding the stormwater pond near my highschool during part of my lunch break.
March
It's March, 2 out of the 12 months have already passed! Blackbirds of all kinds have flooded Southern Ontario, plants are beginning to emerge from under the snow, and some early migrants like Killdeer & American Woodcock are back, it almost feels like spring! I feel good entering March with 102 species, leaving 178 more to go until the record. So far to my knowledge, $556.5 (will update if I'm wrong) has already been raised toward the Hamilton Naturalists Club during my HSA Big Year! If you're interested in making a pledge, here's the link to the Google Form (2023 HSA Big Year Pledge Form)
On Saturday I found a very distant Red-throated Loon at LaSalle Park and then in the afternoon I went to YES Alliance. We cleaned out a few nest boxes on the RBG property so that they could be ready for this summer! On a piece of paper we would write down where the box was located using GPS and list the species that nested in the box previously. We found that the majority of the birds that nested in the boxes were Tree Swallows and House Wrens. The hope/purpose of these boxes was to get Eastern Bluebirds to nest in these. What surprised me was that most of the House Wren nests were built over top of the Tree Swallows'. The second last box we checked had something inside that we did not expect; a nest built 100% out of moss with 4 tiny marble sized white eggs with tiny red speckles. As a group we later determined this to be from a Black-capped Chickadee, not unheard of to nest in boxes but still cool!
Today I was out with George, driving around Halton, Hamilton, and Brant. We began the morning following up on a report of two Meadowlark sp. up Walkers Line in Burlington from a good friend of mine, Ben Oldfield! Last year in May, Ben and I found a Hepatic Tanager together in Oakville!
We got to the spot Ben has described, and saw a nice bright yellow bird foraging right along the road. It was a meadowlark, an Eastern Meadowlark! We might have heard the other individual singing over a hill but couldn't eliminate the possibility that it was a starling. The Eastern Meadowlark that was on the road later flew up on a post right by some horses, and got this photo with the horse in the background!
After that we drove around Hamilton and Brant County in search of Lapland Longspurs where they had been reported a few days ago. Almost along every road we would see a couple of Horned Larks, they were quite neat to watch. Next week brings March Break! That week, I'll spend a day or two at Beamer CA counting migrating raptors. It's a little early for seeing raptors in the hundreds but some early migrants like Turkey Vulture, Red-shouldered Hawk and some accipiters are on the move.
HSA Year List: 103
Recent Rare Bird Sightings:
Harlequin Duck - Continuing female in the Fifty Point marina
Snow Goose - Stayed in the Desjardins Canal in Dundas for a day (Franny Bois; Feb 27)
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