Mira Furgoch and I did a 5-day trip to Ship Sands Island in James Bay. We arrived in Moosonee on Aug. 27 and took a water taxi to the island that evening where we set up our camp and remained until Tuesday Aug 31.
Here is a somewhat disorganized list of the birds we saw throughout the trip. Once we were on the island we spent almost all of our time on the mudflats in order to avoid the mosquitoes. The mudflats extended several kilometers which we walked every day. The weather stayed above 20 C the whole trip and the water was very warm allowing us to walk in bare feet throughout our daily walks. A total of 19 species of shorebirds were seen. We unfortunately did not see any Le Conte's or Nelson's Sparrow because we avoided the interior of the island as much as we could due to the flies. Here are the birds we saw: On Polar Bear Express (between Cochrane and Moosonee) we saw 1 Short-eared Owl 3 Sharp-shinned Hawks 1 Wilson's Snipe In Moosonee 6 Greater Yellowlegs 2 Lesser Yellowlegs 2 Sandhill Cranes Ship Sands Island and area: Snow Goose 500+ Canada Goose 1000+ Mallard 100+ American Black Duck 100+ Green-winged Teal ~50 American Wigeon 100+ Northern Pintail 50+ Northern Shoveler 2 Common Goldeneye 3 Great Blue Heron 3 Bald Eagle 2 Northern Harriers 10 (almost always seen over the grasslands) Black-bellied Plover 3 (2 fly-bys, and 1 solitary) American Golden Plover 1 (fly-by) Semipalmated Plover ~250 (seen daily, typically fed closer to the shoreline and not out on the mudflats) Killdeer 1 (Aug. 28) Greater Yellowlegs 40 (concentrated around the tidal streams) Lesser Yellowlegs 4 (also concentrated around the tidal streams allowing for easy comparison of the two species) Spotted Sandpiper 1 (Aug 30) Whimbrel 20 (largest group was a group of 8, mostly scene on their own and 1 was almost always seen with the Marbled Godwits) Marbled Godwit 32 (a group of 32 was seen every day. They returned to the same place at the same time every day along Wavy Creek to preen, drink and rest) Hudsonian Godwit 3 (2 on Aug 28, 1 on Aug 30) Red Knot 12 (12 briefly landed about 50 meters from us and flew away after a few seconds once they realized some strangers were around - this was far out on the mud flats) Sanderling 1 (seen on Aug 28) Semipalmated Sandpiper ~2000 (couldn't go anywhere without seeing them) Least Sandpiper ~1000 (also couldn't go anywhere without running into them) White-rumped Sandpiper 60 ( groups of ~20 and ~40, they preferred to be several kilometers out on the mudflats - next to the ocean) Bairds Sandpiper 4 (Aug 31) Pectoral Sandpiper 1 (Aug 30) Buff-breasted Sandpiper 6 (group of 5 seen on Aug 28, 1 seen on Aug 31) Bonapartes Gull 1 Arctic Tern 20 (seen every day) 1 Little Gull (see on the way out to the island) Short-eared Owl 1 (seen the first and second night - most likely the same one) No other wildlife. If you'd like more details on what we saw or did or if you'd like directions to where we went please contact me privately: alvanbuckley AT gmail.com a more detailed report will also eventually be posted on my website www.alvanbuckley.com take care, Alvan Buckley _______________________________________________ ONTBIRDS is presented by the Ontario Field Ornithologists - the provincial birding organization. Send bird reports to ONTBIRDS mailing list [email protected] For information about ONTBIRDS visit http://www.ofo.ca/
