Outdoor Ontario
Birding Reports => Toronto Reports => Topic started by: Ed O'Connor on August 07, 2010, 07:29:10 PM
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Thinking the recent cold front and northerly winds may have pushed a few migrants our way, I went to the Spit this morning looking for warblers. Almost immediately, I found a small mixed flock in the Baselands with a couple of Black-and-Whites and a single Canada. In the same flock were Warbling and Red-Eyed Vireos and an immature Great Crested Flycatcher. I walked through the Wet Woods without seeing much more than a Willow Flycatcher. In the more open areas there were flocks of Goldfinches and Cedar Waxwings, and overhead quite a few Chimney Swifts and Barn, Rough-winged, and Bank Swallows.
Bay D had a single Great Egret and an adult Black-Crowned Night Heron. The water everywhere was very high, which meant the only shorebirds about were Spotted Sandpipers. I spoke with one of the people at the banding station on Peninsula D, and she said they'd also had a Canada Warbler, as well as a Magnolia and several Yellow-Rumps. As I was walking down the trail there, a Cooper's Hawk buzzed through, and that put an end to the birding until I reached the very end of the peninsula and looked across at the Double-Crested Cormorant roost. Aside from hundreds of cormorants, there were several dozen immature Night Herons in the shrubs along the shore and a Turkey Vulture flying overhead.
On the way back, I walked through the Baselands again, in the area between the main causeway and the Wet Woods. There I found a Black-billed Cuckoo feeding on a large green caterpillar. Just as I started walking again, a Woodcock flushed by my right foot. The bird was so close and the beating of its wings so violent that I could feel the vibrations through my shirt. Before it could settle, another flushed from the other side. A bit like walking through a minefield but a satisfying way to end the day.
There's a lot of flowers in bloom now down there and butterflies everywhere. Best of the day was a Red-spotted Purple feeding on a yarrow head.