Outdoor Ontario
Birding Reports => Toronto Reports => Topic started by: BC on April 29, 2011, 05:06:15 PM
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I had my first-of-year Warbling Vireos today. One was at Colonel Sam along with Yellow-Rumped, Palm, Black-and-white and Black-throated Green Warblers. The second was at High Park where I also had a Nashville Warbler.
A Yellow-throated Warbler was verbally reported to me at Colonel Sam about noon today but I couldn't find it.
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We were at Pelee, sometime in the latter half of the 20th century (mid-to-late '70s), up near the gate on our second day in, when we were approached by a fellow with the most severe sunburn I've seen since Margaret lit the pilot-light on the old Inglis years ago (the scented natural gas was already suffocating at that point), who asked, in a fairly proper London accent, "D'ya know if they've got yellow-throated warblers here? Just spotted one across the street ..."
I looked at my aunt, who was adjusting her tripod with several violent thrusts of her teflon hip, and did my quirky "eye-roll," thinking, "Right. Yellow-throated up here in early May, at that."
This fellow'd been over from England, camping in the park for a week or more, and as I studied the rolls of dead skin peeling off his forehead, Margaret said, "Let's have a look." I'd written the thing off as a misidentified yellow-throat, but, well, Marge was always a sharp one, even when she was poking a boreal owl with an eye-liner on Amherst Island a few years later (she was convinced it needed assistance, but by the deafening "Clack! Clack! Clack!" which ensued, it most certainly did not.)
When I inquired as to the specific location of the bird, the now-disintegrating Brit mentioned that he's spotted it a tree-top level over at the big pond ... Boing! Ever seen a "Witchity-bird" at tree-top level?
Sure enough, the YTWA was up there, singing its wheezy little Dendroica spp. song (this genus relying on plumage and eyesight heavily), and we dutifully signed it in at The Interpretive Centre as " ... first spotted by the red mummified guy on the picnic bench near the gate."
Updates on Ashbridge's and Woodbine Park to follow -- nothing terrifying, though the egret and the thrasher were delightful eating.