Dear Ontbirders Today a good-sized group of keen birders assembled at the St. Williams Forestry Station to participate in the annual early "spring" OFO field trip to Long Point. Thank you to those members that car pooled, which made manoeuvring a fairly large group a good bit easier. We were lucky that we didn't have the weather that the area experienced yesterday with blowing snow and treacherous roads. Long Point Bay was still frozen over this year, so waterfowl viewing was limited to "lakes" in the surrounding corn fields as a result of all the recent rains. Some local roads were still almost impassable also limiting the number of stops we made.
Nevertheless, we did see the "big three" advertised species. Tundra Swans were in the thousands on the ice of Long Point Bay as we drove the causeway. Better views were had on the "Front Road", County Road 42, both calling in flight and in surrounding corn fields. A number of pairs of Sandhill Cranes were out in the fields too, allowing good telescope looks. A little surprisingly, given their nice recovery of recent years, we didn't see a Bald Eagle until our final stop of the day, an immature bird, with a radio transmitter strapped to its back! New for the year for many included, A. Robins, a number of Killdeer, and blackbirds. We had Pine Siskins in several locations. An extremely cooperative Merlin perched right along the road so that most or all of the group got a look and some even pictures. The wily Wild Turkeys managed to elude us this year but some fortunate individuals saw some on their drive down and/or home. Thank yous go to Bob Stamp and John Olmsted for co-leading the outing, Birds Studies Canada for allowing us to use their Old Cut Field Station as a lunch room, volunteers from the Friends of Long Point for arranging access to the St. Williams Forestry Station facilities and to Diane Salter for again allowing us to visit her well-stocked feeders in Walsingham, which never fail to "produce" a few species we miss elsewhere. Good birding Jim Heslop Ancaster [email protected] _______________________________________________ ONTBIRDS is presented by the Ontario Field Ornithologists - the provincial birding organization. Send bird reports to [email protected] For information about ONTBIRDS visit http://www.ofo.ca/
