Fifteen OFO members joined Rick Szabo and I on May 4 for the annual early spring trip to the Prince Edward County South Shore Important Bird Area. The weather was pleasant, hovering around 12 C with a light north wind and mostly overcast skies.
After departing our meeting location in Picton, we headed straight for the Prince Edward Point National Wildlife Area. We stopped at Point Traverse Woods and spent a good chunk of time slowly walking the trails here looking for songbirds and scanning the lake. We were rewarded with scope views of White-winged and Surf Scoters and Long-tailed Ducks and best of all a young male King Eider. We continued further along to the Prince Edward Point Bird Observatory where we enjoyed a banding demonstration, with a nice selection of birds "in the hand" including Orange-crowned Warbler, Nashville Warbler, Lincoln's Sparrow, and Hermit Thrush. Following the banding, we walked the road to the lighthouse and were treated to amazing views of both Virginia Rail and Sora - the latter of which we observed copulating! Heading back towards Picton along Babylon Road yielded good looks at Eastern Meadowlarks and a Brown Thrasher but no Upland Sandpiper. Our final stop was at Jackson's Falls where we checked the flooded creek for shorebirds. No shorebirds but we had even better looks at Eastern Meadowlarks and a Bobolink posed for the group. We arrived back in Picton shortly after 3 pm having tallied over 80 species despite missing a lot of ducks and shorebirds we can sometimes find on this trip. Special thanks to Rick for all the intel and help with leading and to staff and volunteers at the Prince Edward Point Bird Observatory for putting on a great banding demo. A full species list is available in the eBird trip report: https://ebird.org/tripreport/361611 Good birding, Mike Burrell -- Ontbirds and Birdnews are moderated email Listservs provided by the Ontario Field Ornithologists (OFO) as a service to all birders in Ontario. Birdnews is reserved for announcements, location summaries, first of year reports, etc. To post a message on Birdnews, send an email to: [email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns, contact the Birdnews Moderators by email at [email protected]. Please review posting rules and guidelines at http://ofo.ca/site/content/listserv-guidelines To find out more about OFO, please visit our website at ofo.ca or Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/OntarioFieldOrnithologists.
