Good evening all.
If I had known retirement would be as good as the last few days I would have retired sooner but then of course I would have had a long wait until I got to the last few days.
Today Ian Cannell, Margaret Liubavicius, Ed O'Conner and I birded the Toronto Islands and you should have been there. There was a medium fallout (maximum for Waterthrushes) and as we slowly made our way through The Islands on another beautiful day we encountered some nice birds despite only finding 77 species and the following are some of the high lights.
Great Egret, Long-tailed Duck, 2 Black-billed Cuckoos, 5 Belted Kingfishers, R-T Hummingbirds, again 9 Flycatcher species including Olive-sided, 11 Yellow-bellied, 10 Great Crested, and 16 Eastern Kingbirds, Blue-headed, Philadelphia, Red-eyed and Warbling Vireos, 75+ Cedar Waxwings, Veery and Swainson's Thrush, 10 Gray Catbirds, Blue-gray Gnatcatchers, Purple Martins, 21 warbler species including 9 Tennessee, 24 Chestnut-sided, 104 Magnolia, 11 Black-throated Blue, 17 Blackburnian, Pine, 11 Bay-breasted, 12 Blackpoll, 28 Black-and-white, 25 American Redstarts, 89 Northern Waterthrushes (yes I said 89), 2 Connecticut, 19 Wilson's and 10 Canada Warblers.
We probably miss at least 25% or more of some of the above birds as you can't check every tree down there, but we did our best and with the good company that I had it was a pleasure all day. It is hard to believe that others are avid enough to spend 12 hours down there and walk 9 to 11 kms with no complaints, except for me saying my feet hurt, makes the outing that much nicer.
