Good evening.
Today was a slow migration day compared to the middle of this week due to weather but that will change for the better. Despite the slowness Alfred Adamo and I found 60 species of birds on The Spit including the following species some of which are early or new arrivals and some are increased numbers..
4 Great Egrets, 5 Great Blue Herons, 127 Mute Swans, 2 Northern Shovelers, 100+ Gadwall, 7 Lesser Scaup, 13 Hooded Mergansers, 2 Red-breasted Mergansers, Semipalmated Plovers, 47 Caspian Terns, Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, Belted Kingfishers, 8 Flycatcher species including Olive-sided Flycatcher, E. Wood Pewee, Yellow-bellied Flycatchers, Eastern Phoebe and Eastern Kingbirds, 1 Brown Creeper, Gray Catbirds, lots of Cedar Waxwings, Red-eyed and Warbling Vireos, 17 Warbler species including Tennessee, Northern Parula, Black-throated blue, Pine, Bay-breasted, Northern Waterthrush, Wilson's and Canada, House Finch and many American Goldfinches.
Another nice day to be out and with some good birding days ahead including the start of some of the Hawk viewing areas on Sept. 1st.
including High Park here in Toronto. Such a large and birdy place and we only met 3 other birders on the whole Spit. A greatly (along with The Islands) under birded but very productive area.
For you Butterfly folks, we observed about 2000+ Monarchs on The Spit today with about 1000 of them being on the base in the morning and I was told by Dan Derbyshire that he saw about 5000 Monarchs at the lighthouse in the early morning.
