Humber Bay Feb 5 & 7 2013

[Rotarran]

In the Toronto Reports section you can see a complete list of the birds I saw.  In this thread I will post some pics.

Feb 5 - this Black Backed Gull is a new species for me.  Not sure how rare it is but it wasn't there when I went today and I did check because I wanted better pics of it.  My hands were cold and it was getting dark, I had a hard time getting a crisp image.


Feb 7
One of the most beautiful and elegant ducks, the Northern Pintail was there:


I was surprised to also find Hooded Mergansers:


Took my first acceptable flight pic of what i think are Red Breasted Mergansers:


Also found the Common Merganser.  I call this the Merganser Hat Trick as these are all the Mergansers one can find in Ontario.  This is as close as I could get, somehow they always knew where I was and kept their distance


A Gadwall braving the coming storm.  I saw a number of Gadwalls and what appeared to be a few Mallard / Gadwall hybrids

[BoboBird]

Good sightings. Looks like you had lots of fun.

[thouc]

Nice finds!

The gull is a Great Black-backed Gull, which has an unstreaked white head, while Lesser Black-blacked Gull has lots of streaking on the head in winter.

Together with the Common Merganser are Greater Scaup (large, rounded heads)

/Thomas

[Rotarran]

Nice finds!

The gull is a Great Black-backed Gull, which has an unstreaked white head, while Lesser Black-blacked Gull has lots of streaking on the head in winter.

Together with the Common Merganser are Greater Scaup (large, rounded heads)

/Thomas

Thank you for helping me ID these birds.  I actually took quite a few pics of the Scaups (there were many) hoping that I would catch a few Greater ones among them.  But then looking at the low probability of them even being here, I just kinda wrote them all off as Lesser Scaups.  Do you want me to post more pics or are you fairly positive on the Greater Scaup.  This would give me one more species on my list.

[Reuven_M]

The scaup you saw are probably almost all greaters, lessers are fairly uncommon in winter.
In your picture, there are 3 scaup, the left bird (female) is probably a lesser, the other 2 males look like greaters.

[thouc]

When you say it, the sleeping female has a pointy head.

[Rotarran]

Cool, I like finding new species without ever leaving the house.  Well on days like this anyway :p

[Palo]

Nice finds Rotarren, and in that weather!  I have yet to see a Northern Pintail.  Thanks for sharing.