Good evening folks
Alfred Adamo picked me up at my place home and rescued me from a roaming Skunk in front of my building. It spent about 10 minutes wandering from in front of me to the houses across the street where it set off the motion sensors that control the lights of 5 houses. Fun to watch as long as it didn't get too close to me.
We arrived at The Spit at 7:30 a.m. and started with the first 7 of 21 Rusty Blackbirds for the day on the west side of The Base. We went out along The Causeway and then the Outer Arm to Pipit Point, across The Flats to the Small Pond and down to the End Of The Road. From here we went through the base of Peninsula A, where Ian Cannell joined us and then onto Peninsula B.After Peninsula B we went through the bases of Peninsulas B and C and the we wimped out and caught the Van a rode back to the Base of The Spit. We then spent about an hour or so checking out the West Side of The Base before calling it a day at 4:30 p.m. During this odyssey we came up with the following species besides the Rusty Blackbirds.
Turkey Vulture (not too common over The Spit), Great Egret, Black-crowned night-Heron, Great blue Herons, 18 waterfowl species including Common Loons, Green-winged Teals, American Wigeons, Northern Shovelers, Northern Pintails, Canvasbacks, Redheads, Buffleheads, Hooded Mergansers and American Coots, Caspian Tern, 4 Belted Kingfishers, Blue-headed Vireos, Brown Creepers, 39 Winter Wrens, many Ruby and Golden-crowned Kinglets, 7 Warbler species including Tennessee, range-crowned, Nashville, Black-throated blue, Palm and lots of Yellow-rumps, 10 Sparrow species including 19 Field Sparrows in one flock, Song, Lincoln's, Swamp, many White-crowned and white-throated, Fox, and Eastern Towhee, Eastern Meadowlark and the above mentioned rusty Blackbirds.
Beautiful weather again and great company as usual. Tomorrow looks like another nice day to be out there but I know that a lot of you have Thanksgiving plans. Monday for those who can get away may prove to be a good day for hawk watching at your favourite viewing area as the forecast is for 15 km NW winds.
I am revising this part of my report as now the forecast for Tuesday has changed and may not be as good for Raptors after all but still with NE winds it may produce some migrating Raptors. Best winds are North or Northwest. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
