Greetings birders, Today (May 21) Mark Wiercinski, John Haselmayer, myself and guest "victim" Doug Martin completed our annual Bruce Peninsula birdathon. The weather was hot and sunny, which is perfect if you want to spend a day sun tanning on the beach, but it makes for challenging birdathon!
Due to the past several days of great weather, there were few migrants lingering around the peninsula. We instead focused our efforts on breeding bird species (the Bruce has a relatively high diversity of species that nest here). Many breeding birds which we often struggle to find on our birdathon were already well-established on their territories. Some early nesters had already become quite silent. Our total for the day was 152 species, which is well below our average (163). However, we had one of the best species in almost a decade of doing this birdathon... 3 American White Pelicans flew over the harbour in Tobermory just before sunset. [Will post if the birds are found again. Tobermory is located at the tip of the Bruce Peninsula. Follow Highway 6 until it ends at the very large lake.] It was a grueling, but fun day. For the fellow geeks out there who like details, we birded from 2:00am - 9:30pm, drove 530km and ate approximately 10,000 calories of Oreos and Jujubes. Happy birding! Ethan Meleg Owen Sound, ON [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/
