Good evening.
Today I led a TOC group on a birding outing on the Leslie Street Spit and despite the dismal forecast all week we had a dry (except for the underbrush) summer like day. We were all over dressed.
The best birds today were 2 male non breeding plumaged Harlequin Ducks on the lake off The Flats after 1 pm today. These birds were seen by the remaining 8 birders that put up with me all day. These are probably the same 2 birds seen by Dan Derbyshire and others on Sept. 12th beside Pipit Point. Thanks to his report we were on the lookout for them and we got lucky and found them.
These were not the only nice birds found as we walked along. There were not many birds on The Spit but for the day we did come up with 60 species including the following.
Pied-billed Grebe, American Wigeon, Green-winged Teal, American Black Duck, Northern Pintail, Northern Shoveler, Redhead, Long-tailed Duck, Bufflehead, Hooded Merganser, Osprey, Northern Harrier, Sharp-shined and Cooper's Hawk, American Coot, American Golden Plover, Chimney Swift, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Eastern Phoebe, Philadelphia Vireo, Gray-cheeked Thrush, Winter and House Wren, both Kinglets, only 8 Warbler species including Palm, Nashville and Wilson's, and 40+ Rusty Blackbirds on the base of The Spit. We started with around 25 Rusties in the am and as we returned around 4 pm there were over 40, must have had one final nesting while we were out on The Spit.
