Everyone, Overlooked in Ron Pittaway's excellent summary of failed Arctic nestings is a report that appeared on OntBirds pertaining to a sighting on July 9 at the Blenheim sewage ponds (south of Chatham).
On this date a flock of about 150 adult Black-bellied Plovers were observed in flight as they flew south very fast over the ponds without stopping (Irene Woods and Dorothy Smith). This observation is unprecedented for southern Ontario both for the time of year and number of birds involved. It certainly fits into the overall picture, and it suggests that these birds vacated their northern breeding grounds due to unfavourable conditions there for nesting. In addition to the expected lack of juvenile shorebirds, there is another species worth monitoring this fall -- Sabine's Gull. Since virtually all birds seen in southern Ontario are juveniles, numbers reported this fall will also provide additional evidence. My guess is that very few will be found. Alan Wormington, Leamington ________________________________________________________________ The best thing to hit the Internet in years - Juno SpeedBand! Surf the Web up to FIVE TIMES FASTER! Only $14.95/ month - visit www.juno.com to sign up today! From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tue Aug 10 17:14:50 2004 Return-Path: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Delivered-To: [email protected] Received: from tomts5-srv.bellnexxia.net (tomts5.bellnexxia.net [209.226.175.25]) by king.hwcn.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E313547EC0 for <[email protected]>; Tue, 10 Aug 2004 17:14:49 -0400 (EDT) Received: from sympatico.ca ([209.226.140.86]) by tomts5-srv.bellnexxia.net (InterMail vM.5.01.06.10 201-253-122-130-110-20040306) with ESMTP id <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> for <[email protected]>; Tue, 10 Aug 2004 17:28:22 -0400 Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 17:21:41 -0400 From: Gordon Bellerby <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.73 [en]C-SYMPA (Win95; U) X-Accept-Language: en,fr-CA MIME-Version: 1.0 To: ontbirds <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: [Ontbirds]AVOCETS/Hamilton Tollgate Ponds X-BeenThere: [email protected] X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 21:14:52 -0000 As of 1550 hours Tuesday both birds were feeding hard at north end of southern pond-? could be moving out to-night. G.B.
