A CBC On New Year's Day

Many birders sharpened their pencils last night in anticipation of finding birds today to start checking off their list for 2021!

In Chatham-Kent, some dedicated birders participated in the St. Clair NWA Christmas Bird Count, a tradition for New Year's Day.  This is a count I have done most years since I started birding back in....well...decades ago!  It is a great way to start off the New Year.  I have done various areas, but mostly the Bradley Farms, St. Luke's Marsh or the wildlife area itself.

Old photo from a past count:

This year we got into St. Luke's for the first time in many years.  I had done this location for several years some time ago.  It is now owned by Ducks Unlimited, so it will be interesting to see how that develops.

I also got to do the wildlife area itself, so there was a lot of walking today!

The weather was not all that great today, typical of the last month.  Yesterday I checked out the wildlife area in better weather to get an idea what was around.  There was more open water on Thursday, as today we found very little.  Doing marsh habit can be bleak when it is quite frozen!

St. Luke's Marsh

Yesterday I saw some Snow Geese, many Northern Shovelers, a Marsh Wren and probably the highlight was a Common Yellowthroat.

I also encountered a huge flock of Common Redpolls (150+).  However they did not settle anywhere for good looks.

Today was much colder and open water had frozen overnight.  Luckily the wind was light first thing, but by the time we left, it was quite brisk.  I had the venerable Donald Pye with me today.

I decided to check out St. Luke's first.  It was interesting to get back in there after several years.  I have done this one in different weather conditions.  Photos from the past....

The Lake

At least we had no snow or high winds.  It was rather quiet at first.  Some Snow Geese were seen, but over the wildlife area.  Closer to the lake, we came across a pair of Great Horned Owls, which when flushed, got the crows riled up for some time.

Out on the lake, it was fairly frozen, but we did see up to ten Bald Eagles congregating in one spot on the ice.  A few gulls were out there, but not much else.

Same spot today as shown above

The scenery has changed a bit since I was out here last due to high water.

We did not walk all the way around, but went back one of the cross dikes.  Here we encountered a Common Yellowthroat chirping in the phrag, probably our best bird during this walk.

List for St. Luke's portion:

https://ebird.org/checklist/S78400081

After completing St. Luke's we did the "triangle" walk around the wildlife area.  There was not much to see as things had frozen over since the previous day.

Along Balmoral Line, we encountered some birds and got a view at the two small open water spots that held a bit of waterfowl.

Tundra Swan in this photo plus Mallards, Shovelers, geese

I did spot five Ruddy Ducks and over twenty Northern Shovelers.  Up to eleven Cackling Geese were seen and heard.  Their calls alerted us to their presence.  Some eventually landed on the ice.

At one point while scoping, I saw a couple of swans in the one spot.  One was obviously a Tundra, but I got to looking more at the other one and realized it was a Trumpeter!  I did not have the big camera on this outing, so no record photo.  It was bit far anyway.

Farther up the road we encountered a couple of White-crowned Sparrows which are alway nice to get.  And, back at the parking lot just before we left, a White-throated popped up to complete our list.

photo from yesterday

It was past noon by this point, so I decided to call it a day.  Just as well, as the weather deteriorated soon after this.

List for SCNWA:

https://ebird.org/checklist/S78400814

Stayed tuned for final results of today's count!