Highlights of a birding trip today included (a) Barred owl and Rough Legged Hawks (including 1 dark morph) on Hall's Road, (b) a Great Gray Owl and Red Bellied Woodpecker at Lyndeshores feeder trail (along with Downey, Hairy, robins, RW blackbirds, WB Nuthatch), and (3) GGO's at Thickson's Woods meadow.
However, while viewing GGO's at the meadow, it was disappointing to see some birders wandering through the meadow without regard for either the vegetation of the meadow or the owls themselves. The owls were visibly bothered, as they took flight several times to move to different perches. There are walking paths through the meadow, so one can get reasonably close to the owls without straying from the paths. In fact, we had terrific views from the edge of the road on the west side without even going into the meadow. Birders are generally respectful of vegetation, and generally are helpful and friendly with each other. There are times, however, when it is necessary to speak up, and I would encourage birders to do so when you see others that are either harassing owls in order to get pictures or trampling vegetation rather than staying on paths. Jack and Frances Alvo Directions to Hall's Road and Lyndeshores - take 401 east from Toronto, so south on Salem, east on Bayly until Hall's Road. For Lyndeshores, continue east from Hall's Road and look for sign. Directions to Thickson's Road - east on 401 past Salem (and a couple of other exits) until Thickson's Road, then south to the woods. The owls are generally in the meadow to the north side of the road used for parking. From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sat Jan 1 18:17:16 2005 Return-Path: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Delivered-To: [email protected] Received: from edam.execulink.net (edam.execulink.net [199.166.6.57]) by king.hwcn.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 076EC9F180 for <[email protected]>; Sat, 1 Jan 2005 18:17:13 -0500 (EST) Received: from none-sc5roldlld (ppp354.ac2.56k.execulink.com [209.239.26.100]) by edam.execulink.net (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id j01NISc09285 for <[email protected]>; Sat, 1 Jan 2005 18:18:28 -0500 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [email protected] Date: Sat, 01 Jan 2005 18:18:11 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Priority: normal X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Windows (v4.12a) Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-description: Mail message body Subject: [Ontbirds]Great Gray Owl near Toronto Zoo X-BeenThere: [email protected] X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 01 Jan 2005 23:17:16 -0000 Hi Everyone My daughter, Shannon Livingston, saw a Great Gray Owl this afternoon around 4 pm on Reesor Road about 1 km north of Old Finch Road. Old Finch Road is the road that runs east & west immediately north of the Toronto Zoo property. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
