Birding in Ottawa

I spent two days in Ottawa (and two day driving :-(  ) over the last week, and talked my wife into letting me go on a 4 hour nature walk. Since we were in Napeon/Ottawa, I decided to go to The Stoney Swamp nature area and walk the "Jack Pine Trail" as well as the Beaver/Chipmunk Trail. That was about all I had time to do.

There are two really good websites for Ottawa Birding that I must link to:

http://www.neilyworld.com/neilyworld/stony20.htm
http://www.ofnc.ca/birding/wheretogo/index.html#Sto

I was hoping to see:
-Black Backed Woodpecker
-Three Toed Woodpecker
-Pileated Woodpecker
-Boreal Chickadee
-Grey Jay
-Winter Wren
-Red Breasted Nuthatch
-Purple Finch?

*** Post Script: It's funny, I thought there would be many birds in Ottawa that are just not in the SW Ontario... but I was wrong... the birds are basically the same. The Woodpeckers that are mentioned above are more common in the Winter. How can anything survive outside in the winter in Ottawa?

Some birds seen/heard include:

Wood Thrush
Cedar Waxwing
Blue Jay
Black Capped Chickadee
Common Grackel
Red Winged Blackbird
Downy Woodpecker
White Breasted Nuthatch
Red Breasted Nuthatch
Pileated Woodpecker (Only Heard, and there was a dead tree stump that I flushed him from. )
House Finch
Crows/Ravens (EVERYWHERE!)


Stoney Swamp overall was a gorgeous area. The name is fitting. The soil/ground in Ottawa seems to be shallow topsoil with slate-rock underneath. As you walk these nature trails, you see lots of exposed rock under the topsoil, and clear water with marshland... a northern Swamp. Just gorgeous. A little bit different then the types of natural areas you'd see in Southwestern Ontario.

I also saw some very docile rabbits and squirels. This was a red-tailed squirel that I'm not used to seeing in Windsor:

Finally, a panoramic of what might summarize what Stoney Swamp looked like as you exited the forested path and found the boardwalk:

Happy Birding!


Dwayne