Big Great Gray Owl Day in Simcoe: Reports out of Ottawa a few weeks ago recording 42 and 45 Great Gray Owls being observed in one day made me start to wonder how many Great Grays one could observe in North Simcoe County on the shores of Lake Simcoe in one day. I am now tracking over 180 GGOWs for Simcoe County so assumed that I may be able to tie these one-day records in the area around Orillia. I started out at 6:00 a.m. from Midland west of Orillia and ended at 6:00 p.m. at Casino Rama east of Orillia. I took two hours off from 12-2 p.m. which are low productive times for observations to have lunch and check my emails for owls that had been seen that morning in order to chart my afternoon route. I wanted to be at Muley Point Road between 4-5 p.m. since I had been observing up to 17 Great Gray Owls in that area in the evenings and had been studying and recording their movements so knew where to expect most of them. I recorded time, location and details of every owl observed. I observed 59 Great Gray Owls during the day which turned out to be a bright, sunny day and not the best to observe owls during mid day. Of the total, 21 were observed in the Muley Point Road loop and on one road around 4:30 p.m. there seemed to be an owl sitting on every fence post close to the road. Great Grays seem to come close to the ground at certain times of the day and sit high in the trees during other times of day. I know that it is possible to increase this number since I recorded 3-4 Great Gray Owls from some areas during the morning that I knew had 8-10 reported in late afternoon a few days earlier but since one can not be in all the good areas at the optimum time had to leave these areas with lower counts than the total.
Also observed during the day were 10 Northern Shrikes, several flocks of Snow Buntings, a small flock of Pine Grosbeaks near Moonstone, and 20 flocks of Wild Turkeys with an average of 50 birds in each flock. In the early morning they were eating grit off the roads then scratching through the snow in the open fields in the afternoon. Bob Bowles Orillia, Ontario
