My first stop was Wheatley Harbour where I found some geese! (they were over by Hillman yesterday). Some white geese stood out in the form of two Snow, two Ross's and one hybrid of the two species.
I noticed that one was different from the start, but I wanted to get a good look at photos at home before I put it down as a hybrid Ross's X Snow.
It seems that the hybrids are becoming more common recently. Sometimes they can look much like Ross's, but subtle differences can be seen such as the size and shape of the bill. Today's bird was rather obvious as it was in between the size of the two species, and looked uglier!
I was sort of expecting Greater White-fronted at Wheatley as well. Upon further examination of my photos, I did have the three that Ken Burrell reported a couple hours later! Sometimes it pays to take a series of photos even though they were very distant.
Although not very identifiable in the photo below, blowing it up here at home reveals the 3 Greater White-fronted. My bad!
I moved on to Point Pelee for a walk out Shuster Trail, Tilden's Woods up to Cactus Trail and back to the VC parking lot.
There were lots of distant ducks off the east side. I did notice one White-winged Scoter flying around.
At the north end of Tilden's, I encountered a nice flock of birds that included several dozen American Robins, about 20 Yellow-rumped Warblers, a Northern Flicker, Purple Finch, White-breasted Nuthatch, etc.
I walked a bit at Hillman Marsh but did not see much except for a large flock of blackbirds near the Hillman church. It was mostly Brown-headed Cowbirds, but Common Grackles, Red-winged Blackbirds and European Starling were mixed in. I did not notice anything else. I was hoping to see a yellow head!
On the way home there was not much of note except a Red-shouldered Hawk at Jeannette's Creek.
Here we are at the end of another weekend.....
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| Dawn, Friday, Port Lambton |
I am slightly jealous of those Ross's...we passed within 50 meters of the Cathcart birds and didn't think to look!
ReplyDeleteApparently you had to get out and walk up to the rock shoreline to see them. They were not visible from the parking lot or road.
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