Birding Pelee with the Ojibway Birding Group

This is a late posting, since this walk took place last Saturday (May 19th), but I figured I would do a quick write-up anyway. Our walk started off at the tip, because a California Gull had been seen the day earlier, but the most noteworthy birds were small flocks of Rudy Turnstone and a Lesser Black backed Gull.

Lesser Black Backed Gull... Can you find him?

Red eyed Vireo. Difficult to photograph!

Our walk between the Tip and the vistors center had the following birds: (off the top of my head)
Northern Parula
Eastern Wood Pewee
Common Grackle
Tennessee Warbler
Black throated green Warbler
Magnolia Warbler
Eastern Kingbirds
Black billed Cuckoo (heard)
Blackburnian Warblers (several duller females)
Chimney Swifts
Great crested Flycatcher

Plus the birds photographed below:

Poor photo of one of my favorite warblers. Just a few meters from the trail. Backlit with sun behind this tree. Thanks Kelly and Paul for getting me on this bird!

Philadelphia Vireo singing at waist level in a thicket. I saw two more later on in the day on Shuster Trail.

Coin Series 2012: "Our Legendary Nature"

 I've been looking for these quarters that have been recently been released from the mint but have been unable to find them. So I stopped by a small collectables store on University today and picked up a few. My first hunch was that the bird coin was a Snowy Owl, but it turns out to be a Peregrine Falcon. Canada Mint as a pretty cool advertisement on Youtube for this series.

Speaking of Peregrine Falcons, there are four babies nesting at the bridge in Windsor. Two are poking up in this photo below. Click here for more about the Peregrine Falcons: http://www.windsorstar.com/life/Windsor+Peregrine+falcon+chicks+named+tagged/6646170/story.html

The media (and the former youtube video) really make a big deal about these birds and how amazing our environment must be that this extremely rare birds are making a comeback. To a certain extent, yes, its good news that DDT was banned, but we still have a long way to go. I must admit that seeing four fledglings grow up just minutes from my house will make June a little more exciting.

Ojibway Walks

Ojibway walks this week had:
Ring necked Pheasant
Blue Grey Gnatcatchers (nesting)
Green Heron (Being Mobbed by a Blue Jay)
Indigo Buntings
Eastern Towhees

Hobomok & Silver Spotted Skipper as well as many duskywings.

Hobomok Skipper on Blue Flag Iris

The grassy antenna field in LaSalle that I visited last summer has a few grassland species again. The most prominent bird is Red winged Blackbird, but there are a few Eastern Meadowlarks and singles of Bobolink and Savannah Sparrows.

Amazing bird. Only the second or third time seeing this in Ontario in my life. Very skittish though. I could only get within about 60m before it would move to a distant tower support line.

The song of a male Bobolink is really incredible. It might be the coolest bird song I have heard out of 300 I have on my life list.

I think I will be going to the Carden Alvar OFO Field Trip... I'm 70% sure I'm going. Very exciting... I could be seeing potentially 5 or more life birds.  

This migration season, in my humble opinion was a little bit of a let-down. Butterflies stole the show.  I came across a good article about the butterfly explosion that took place in early May. Read here for more: http://www2.canada.com/windsorstar/news/story.html?id=f9d6d0f8-5da6-46f5-8b45-e93c8c85c21b

Good birding!
Dwaynejava