Spring was definitely in the air on this glorious Sunday afternoon. Unable to
stay indoors, I did a circuit of the Newmarket area with my dog, Sam, to see
what was out and about. We stopped for a walk at the Cawthra Mulock reserve on
Bathurst St. and had a Pileated Woodpecker, then we lucked into an unlucky
Great Horned Owl trailing a smoke cloud of screaming crows as it flew just over
the treetops.
In the nearby Holland Marsh we had very nice looks at two Snowy Owls, one on
the east side of Aileen Street, the other on the east side of Jane Street (both
of them sitting in the fields north of Woodchopper's Lane). Whether these are
the birds who wintered here or two others passing through I'm not sure. Just
west of Hwy. 400 an adult Cooper's Hawk was sitting in a tree in the front yard
of a house on Canal Road.
With accipiters in mind, I checked on the White-crowned Sparrows that have
wintered along Devald Road just south of Canal and found three of them
amidst the flock of American Tree Sparrows they've kept company with over the
last four months. They were on the south side of the road, hiding among the
weeds and old vehicles by the roadside west of Day Street.
Driving up to the Ravenshoe Road area in southwest Keswick I added numerous
Horned Larks, several lingering Snow Buntings, two more Snowy Owls, and a
light-morph Rough-legged Hawk - all along the muddy strip of Yonge Street that
runs south from Ravenshoe.
On a circuitous route home, I added three Wild Turkeys in a field west of
Warden Avenue a few kms south of Davis Drive.
Ron Fleming, Newmarket
Newmarket is located in York Region, directly north of Toronto and south of
Lake Simcoe.
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