August 30 2012. Long Point, ON. An on-again off-again family task took me to Lake Erie today and to one of Canada’s best birding hotspots. Bird Studies Canada operates bird observatories at Long Point, one out on a tip of land in the middle of Lake Erie, another one close to a heavily used camping, cottage and party area. We spent an hour or so at the latter observatory and watched the team of volunteers checking the mist nets, extracting trapped birds and banding them. While we watched they handled two or three of Black–throated Blue Warblers, a couple of American Redstarts, a young House Wren, a Magnolia Warbler and a Red–eyed Vireo.
At a marsh lookout platform we watched a female Marsh Hawk quartering the wide expanse of cattails and sloughs, and far in the distance a large group of Turkey Vultures was circling and playing in a column of rising warm air.
A stop at some sewage lagoons turned up some interesting groups of shorebirds, mostly Lesser Yellowlegs and Least Sandpipers with a couple of Pectoral Sandpipers for variety.
Out in the deeper water a dozen or so Lesser Yellowlegs were swimming and behaving like phalaropes, which was at first rather confusing because three Red-necked Phalaropes were nearby, also swimming and also, quite properly, feeding like phalaropes. The confusion was cleared when the yellowlegs rejoined their companions and I was then able to concentrate on the phalaropes and make out the rather fine distinctions between these Red-necked Phalaropes and the Wilson’s Phalaropeof a couple of days ago. The adjective ‘Red-necked’ only truly applies during their brief courtship and breeding season of April, May and June, otherwise they are mostly grey and white, and strikingly similar to the Wilson’s. A fairly bold smudge of black behind the eye marked these birds as Red-necked.
Just because I’d never knowingly seen them before, these fascinating Red-necked Phalaropes were my Birds of the Day.