Good morning Yesterday Ian Cannell took Jay Peterson and myself to the Opinicon Road area and we had a very nice day of birding while we found 98 species of birds with again the best find being 5 Loggerhead Shrikes. We were fortunate enough to observe the parent birds feeding 3 newly fledged young, We watched these birds no more than 50 yards in front of us as we stood on the road. We watched as one parent sat on a Juniper branch very close to the fledglings and didn't move as the other parent continuously flew out, found food and came back and fed each fledgling in turn. The guarding bird may have been concerned as there was a pair of Northern Harriers hunting very close to and over them or that was normal behaviour.
Other birds of interest to us were observed including 11 Common Loons, Pied-billed Grebe, Northern Shoveler, American Wigeon, Lesser Scaup, Hooded Merganser, 2 Osprey, 4 Ruffed Grouse including a lone tiny chick crossing a paved road, 7 wild Turkeys, Semipalmated Plover and Sandpipers, Upland Sandpiper, Black Tern, Black-billed Cuckoo, 4 Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers plus nest, 4 Pileated Woodpeckers, 2 up close, 7 Common Ravens, both Nuthatches, 9 Great-crested Flycatchers, 4 Eastern Wood Pewees, 6 Eastern Phoebes, 9 Eastern Bluebirds, Wood Thrushes, 2 Yellow-throated Vireos, 81 Red-eyed Vireos (undercounted) plus a nest, 16 Warbling Vireos, 13 Warbler species including 5 Golden-winged Warblers, 2 Black-throated Blue warblers (2 males together (inches apart) singing and apparently on territory (strange)), Blackburnain Warbler, 8 American Redstarts, 6 Pine Warblers, 12 Cerulean Warblers, 15 Ovenbirds, Northern Waterthrush, 30 Chipping Sparrows, Scarlet Tanagers, Indigo Buntings and Rose-breasted Grosbeaks. The weather was pleasant and surprisingly we did not encounter many Mosquitoes, I had 2 on my hand and that is all I saw all day. By far the best area of birding was along Opinicon Road with some of the surrounding roads adding to our birding enjoyment. Best thing about these outings is the great company, important for an enjoyable outing if you are lucky enough to have that. DIRECTIONS:- OPINICON and CHAFFEYS LOCK ROADS Exit Hwy 401 at Exit #617 just east of Kingston (County Rd 10 or Perth Road) and drive north approximately 30 km to just south of Raymonds Corners or past the small town of Perth Road to Opinicon Road. Opinicon Road becomes Chaffeys Locks Road at Chaffeys Locks. Norm Murr Richmond Hill, ON "Sils mordent, mords les" From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fri Jun 8 12:37:04 2007 Return-Path: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Delivered-To: [email protected] Received: from smtp105.rog.mail.re2.yahoo.com (smtp105.rog.mail.re2.yahoo.com [206.190.36.83]) by king.hwcn.org (Postfix) with SMTP id BBB16634A2 for <[email protected]>; Fri, 8 Jun 2007 12:37:03 -0400 (EDT) Received: (qmail 99279 invoked from network); 8 Jun 2007 16:37:04 -0000 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=s1024; d=rogers.com; h=Received:X-YMail-OSG:Reply-To:From:To:Subject:Date:Message-ID:MIME-Version:Content-Type:X-Priority:X-MSMail-Priority:X-Mailer:Thread-Index:X-MimeOLE:Importance; b=Cya+tag48+0UKL0q64GQ8TskTrkcxryMWhMAVXXsqn0H5p5fKFmAIMtYVFmg7BtV6KfiCtmIT0kwGmWNnTSERqpdBq0K4zFa5v2DV+6roYoGEp40z90P1yi0pLr6GV4sA6+OC3q3tPlt62LaU7Q/jdWvLiVehb10ZCc1CTtO9TE ; Received: from unknown (HELO DavidDesktop) ([EMAIL PROTECTED]@74.115.78.56 with login) by smtp105.rog.mail.re2.yahoo.com with SMTP; 8 Jun 2007 16:37:04 -0000 X-YMail-OSG: k2FpjnAVM1kd.AukXcbQwPHJNJGmBGLvlMC7gpcYO6zi1WodUHciXMJ6BUlRFO8o6A-- From: "Camp Chief" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 12:37:05 -0400 Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook, Build 10.0.6822 Thread-Index: Acep6zO8HU7GpxFSR7imHLdP3t9lMA=X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.3028 Importance: Normal Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Content-Filtered-By: Mailman/MimeDel 2.1.1 Subject: [Ontbirds]Further to Possible Eurasian Collared-Dove - Innisfil ON X-BeenThere: [email protected] X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2007 16:37:04 -0000 The subject bird was seen again today, by David Randle on my property in the Sandy Cove area of Innisfil, ON at about 11.50 a.m. The sighting was witnessed by my two neighbours - I was out looking to see if I could see it, and I called my neighbours over when I did see it. It was halfway up a small birch tree on the front of my property. I was able to shoot one additional photo, which is not of much further help and not as good a shot as those shown previously. (http://www.scoutscan.net/dgr click "birds") I was endeavouring to get underneath the bird to get a photo of the underside when someone locally slammed a car door and it took off and flew away. However, as it flew away, without photo confirmation, I can say that the rear underside was splayed out, with white feathers to the outside and dark or black feathers running from about the centre of the bird backwards to the rear on the inside of the underside. I am sorry I am not familiar enough with terms to be able to tell you in proper terminology. I will check back again later to see if it has returned. In the effort to identify this bird, someone drew my attention to a web site showing the differences between the Eurasian CD and Ringed TD at http://esaudubon.org/photos/eurasian_collared_dove.htm . Using only those photos I would have to say the bird I am seeing here is much more like the photo displayed of the Eurasian than of the ringed. David Randle Innisfil, ON
