Standing on the shore of Lake Simcoe in November is not typically an enjoyable experience but it was a pleasure today. Kevin Shackleton, Mike Van den Tillaart and I birded the south shore of the lake and enjoyed the unseasonably warm weather as well as some very good birding.
We started at the north end of Riverview Beach Rd. in Pefferlaw where Bruce Brydon had all three scoters last Sunday. We did not find a Surf but did observe over a dozen White-winged Scoters and one Black plus 100+ Bonaparte's Gulls, two Greater Blackbacks, dozens of Common Loons, plus several Cm. Goldeneye, Bufflehead, Long-tailed Ducks, and Lesser Scaup. The most pleasant surprise, however, was six Dunlin and one Black-bellied Plover on the sand flat located near the base of the jetty visible from the parkette on Irving Road. (We were fortunate enough to get permission from some local residents to scope the birds from their backyard at a much closer location.) At Cook's Bay in south Keswick we were surprised at the number of American Coots we observed: there were at least 700 - and that is a conservative estimate! Along the west end of Ravenshoe Road we had barely satisfactory scope views of one of the Bald Eagles that nested among the herons in the tamarack stand north of Best Asia Farms, but our optical straining was compensated for when a flock of approx. 500 Snow Buntings crossed our line of vision in a flurry of black and white wings. A male Northern Harrier did the same for us later. Other interesting birds for the day included one Cooper's Hawk, one American Kestrel, and a Great Blue Heron. Ron Fleming, Newmarket Lake Simcoe is directly north of Toronto. _______________________________________________ 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/
