May 3 2019. Erieau, ON. Looking back over my day’s notes, a day in which I recorded 89 species, it is just about impossible to pick one species as My Bird of the Day. A quick review of birds that made me think wow! includes Scarlet Tanager (actually two gaudy males almost side by side), a Black-throated Blue Warbler, a Hooded Warbler, a stunningly orange/yellow Yellow Warbler, a bunch of Blue-winged Teal, many Soras and a couple of Virginia Rails.
Where to start? Well, a companion and I had taken two days out of our busy lives to visit two of Canada’s birding hotspots, Rondeau Provincial Park and Point Pelee National Park. Both are on the north shore of Lake Erie and are landing points for migrants. This morning started out gloomy and very damp, it had rained heavily overnight and misty damp hung in the air; perfect it seems for birding. Hundreds of thousands of migrants must have dropped in overnight.
To start I was happy to see White-throated Sparrows and a few White-crowned Sparrows along the roadside; the novelty soon wore off, wherever we paused there were more whitethroats and the deep litter on the forest was jumping with them, I had to look away. But in the forest above us, almost anywhere, I could see a year’s supply of Yellow-rumped Warblers and the odd Black-throated Green Warbler to relieve the tedium. The roads through the park were wet and large numbers of thrushes, both Veerys, and Hermit Thrushes were scratching for food along the edges.
A page of my notebook has 23 lines and a morning of sightings at Rondeau filled three columns.
Later, on a tip, we headed along the shore to the small fishing community of Erieau, where we were directed to look for Soras and Virginia Rails. Apparently, those same overnight conditions had swept many in. We found both species quite easily, which in itself is astonishing because they are usually secretive birds and far more often heard than seen. Here though, the winter had substantially flattened the cattail marshes so there were many exposed areas connected by patchy rafts of aquatic vegetation, the birds were hungry and more interested in refuelling than staying out of sight. Perhaps because of their usual elusiveness they were jointly my Birds of the Day.
The Erieau (all those vowels!) area held other delights and surprises: Pied-billed Grebes, 23 Willets, half a dozen Black-bellied Plovers, Great Egrets and a small group of Blue-winged Teal included. They all added to a day overloaded with top-layer sightings as noted above. I’ll spare readers the full list of 89, but to balance the account I’ll add a few FOYs (firsts of the year): Warbling Vireo, eye-popping Magnolia and Blackburnian Warblers, a couple of Orchard Orioles, and both Blue-headed and Yellow-throated Vireos.
