The most recent sighting information is from this morning. From the most regular viewing location at Westley's Point, a large flock was observed offshore. The ice is out now so the birds will no longer be standing on ice edges. This will make viewing individual birds more challenging but will not diminish the experience of seeing tens of thousands of birds gathered together on the water and periodically lifting off en masse. It is still a breathtaking sight.
A scope will help to try to find one or two Ross's Geese or a Ross's x Greater Snow Goose hybrid and you can also more closely examine the blue morph birds. There are also quite a few young geese in the flocks. These look gray. The daily routine is for the birds to spend most of their time on the water during the day. Some may leave to feed but most do not. At around supper time (of course) many to most will head north of Hwy 401 in small flocks (but usually lifting off at about the same time). They head several concessions north to favourite corn fields so going straight north from Westley's point one, two or three concessions and checking west or east you might find a large number of geese from 6:00 p.m. to dark. More often than not they head west towards county rd 34.They move around quite a bit from field to field scrounging what they can. They return to the river at sunset. Dr. Gilles Gauthier, a Greater Snow Goose researcher at Laval University in Quebec City runs a sightings database and encourages birders to submit sightings of neck collared or leg banded geese to his database. In return you find out when the goose was banded and any other resightings. He asks that people submit their sightings directly to the database because the banding office does not report sightings of neck collar or plastic leg band numbers to him (just when they are from the aluminum bands). He currently has over 60,000 resightings. Here is the link to the Greater Snow Goose sightings database: http://www.cen.ulaval.ca/gon-gsg/ It is a great way to participate in data collection and to see where your particular bird(s) were from so if you can read a collar (there are a number of marked birds present) log onto the site with your data at hand. To clarify a point made earlier this week, this event was even more significant than I had thought. The total number of Greater Snow Geese, based on a 2010 survey was probably up to 900,000 not the 1.4 million reported the year before. Revised data has brought that figure down to 1 million birds in 2009. That means that last weekend almost half of the entire population was present in Eastern Ontario, a phenomenon never before seen. Brian Morin Cornwall Directions : To access this area from the 401 take exit 814 (Lancaster cty rd 34) go straight ahead and follow cty rd 2/south service road eastward. There are several viewing areas of the river along this road with the first prominent one being at Westley's Point. Park on the road, not on the field. If you reach Westley's Point and see the birds further east, backtrack a short distance to Glengarry Park. You can walk down to the river. Immediately further east there are several side lanes or streets worth checking, notably 78th Ave and 94th Ave. You can also check at the Quebec border. Accommodation/food/gas : There are numerous motels in Cornwall accessed from Brookdale Ave. to Vincent Massey Drive. Super 8 Motel is right at the Brookdale Ave. exit. Cornwall is 25 minutes from the birds. There is a McDonalds, Tim Horton's, Dairy Queen and gas 5 minutes from the birds. The local MacEwen's gas station usually has a good discount (prices just went up everywhere by 6ยข today) _______________________________________________ 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/
