Hello Ontario Birders, I hope everyone is ready for the New Year! 2025 is just around the corner. This is update two of four. This update will cover the last three weeks of December 2024. The Ontario Winter Winter Brid list is at 201. This is up 34 species since the first week of December. New additions include Barnacle Goose in Oakville at Tannery Park on December 21; Barnacle Goose was new for the Ontario Winter list and found by Christine Reb. Ancient Murrelet was another great species found in Halton County this winter; found on December 14 by Tina Den Besten. Jeff Daley got an early Christmas present with a White-eyed Vireo at his bird feeder in Toronto.
The only two species that I consider common but that we do not have for the 2024-2025 Winter bird list are Brant and Brewer's Blackbird. Other species that I would call uncommon we do not have yet are Vesper Sparrow (seen in 15 of the last 17 winters), Spotted Towhee (11/17), and Great Egret(13/17). To give perspective, the final 2023-2024 list was 226, the 2022-2023 list was 218, and the 2021-2022 list was 229. The average number of species for the last 17 years is 208. This year's list is currently below the average total winter list species number, but we will likely get over 208 species because we still have two months left. The list can be viewed at http://tinyurl.com/myyulvs. Check out the OFO website for winter bird trips http://www.ofo.ca/site/tripsupcoming. Winter bird trips include: - Peterborough Area (Field) - Jan. 1 - Young Birds Camp '24 (Zoom)- Jan. 8 - Winter Birds of the Detroit River: Windsor (Field) - Jan. 11 - Haldimand and Norfolk Counties (Field) - Feb. 22 - Amherst Island (Field) - Feb. 23 The OFO also has a discord group with a Winter bird channel. The link to the OFO discord group is here: https://discord.gg/npbCzXVhZ2. Winter Listers can also keep track of what's being seen in the Ontario Birds Discord Server which can be found here:https://discord.gg/EhvgAc2fwb.I try to update the spreadsheet every couple of days or whenever I hear of a new addition. Please let me know if you hear of a new addition or any other correction to the spreadsheet. Happy New Year, Todd Hagedorn -- Ontbirds and Birdnews are moderated email Listservs provided by the Ontario Field Ornithologists (OFO) as a service to all birders in Ontario. Birdnews is reserved for announcements, location summaries, first of year reports, etc. To post a message on Birdnews, send an email to: birdnews@ontbirds.ca. If you have any questions or concerns, contact the Birdnews Moderators by email at birdn...@ofo.ca. Please review posting rules and guidelines at http://ofo.ca/site/content/listserv-guidelines To find out more about OFO, please visit our website at ofo.ca or Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/OntarioFieldOrnithologists.
