Recap, and Looking Ahead

2016 is over; ding dong the year is dead.

2016 gave me 19 new birds on my life list. Five of those came from Pelee in May, and another six were from my trip to Pennsylvania. I came up-close-and-personal with my first beautiful Canada Warbler during the Credit BioBlitz. And most recently, I finally found my Snow Buntings. Finally.

With a bonus Lapland Longspur hiding amongst the flock - center left, below, with the dark loop coming back off the eye. Somewhat similar to the drab Horned Lark found center right in the photo below, but if you look at the shape of the beak, the lack of dark throat-band, the streaking on the sides...

And now it's a new year. I wonder if I can do an eBird checklist every day for 2017? Or, at least the equivalent of that. A total of 365 for the year. Based on past performance, it's probably not a realistic goal, but it sure sounds nice. I'm 2/2 so far, but today is rainy and blah, I'm not very likely to get outside.

So more realistically, I'll just hope to get some new birds again this year (Wilson's Warbler and Blackpoll Warbler, I'm looking at you), enjoy some of the old ones all over again, and enjoy the fresh air and birdsong wherever I end up.

Yup.

Yesterday was nineteen degrees and sunny - on the 18th of November, I could hardly believe it. Today, it's cold and grey and rainy, and forecasted to snow in the evening. So it seems that our last gasp of fall has officially passed, and now we need to brace ourselves for winter.

But for now, I'm going to remember this glorious, drawn-out fall instead of dwelling on what's to come.

New Territory

Despite the chill in the air this morning, I took myself out to the Hespeler Mill Pond to try and find some of the Greater White-fronted Geese that had been hanging around there lately. Of course I didn't find any. But hey, according to my life list this was my first ever Gadwall, so the trip wasn't a complete loss:

Mostly it was a lot of Mallards, although a sizeable flock of Green-winged Teal came in to land as I was on my way out. A few Northern Shovelers, a few Hooded Mergansers. Two very complacent Mute Swans.

I probably should have brought my scope out and made sure there was nothing hiding in the distance. But after last time, I decided to check out the trail and the vantage points before lugging that thing along. It wasn't an entirely terrible decision, most of the pond was visible enough with just binoculars and/or camera, and there weren't any good places to set up a scope towards the end of the pond that was more interesting (i.e., the marshier end, away from the dam). Still. There were a couple of shorebirds out there, probably yellowlegs but who really knows. And some of those Mallards might really have been Black Ducks or something I suppose. Ah, well. Next time.

The Doldrums Commence

Well, the first frost has frosted, the Juncos have arrived, and the orange on the trees is shading towards brown. Fall is officially on the decline, and winter has to be just around the corner. It's going to be another long, slow countdown to spring. Perhaps longer and slower than usual this year, since I'll be impatiently waiting not just for migrant warblers and green growing things but the dragonfly emergence... kind of feel like I was cheated this year, picking up dragonflies so late. I barely got to survey anywhere at all.

I've been plotting out some places that might be good to go for odes next year. Luther Marsh and the rare property in Cambridge, if their respective owners don't mind. The Guelph Arboretum, as it's nice and close. A couple of the trails along the Speed River that I visited this year for work. Ideally I'd like to set up a regular visiting schedule so as to catch all of the different species that emerge through the year, but I know just how busy my evenings and weekends are during the summer, so that may actually be too ambitious a plan. Also, I'm hesitant to plan to go out wading the river by myself, it's not that I expect to fall in and drown but Murphy's Law implies that that would be the time for it to happen. And to really survey odes, sometimes you just need to get in the water.

Anyway. I have time to figure it out. Clearly I'll have to work a little harder to shift my gears back over to birds for the winter; getting stuck on insects isn't going to do me any good. The winter finch forecast didn't have a lot of northerners coming into Southern Ontario for the cold months, but there's always a few interesting things to see. I just have to get off my butt and go out to find them.

References

I'm finding this book to be the most helpful as I begin to sort out odonate ID.

(Considering that's a Wandering Glider on the cover, I wish I'd had it on hand when I was trying to ID that one a few weeks ago.)

Several key features make it stand out from the other books I have on hand: it includes both dragonflies and damselflies; it has photos and range maps for every species right with the description text for easy access; and perhaps most importantly it includes good descriptions of both the diagnostic features of each species AND the ways in which each species compares to their closest lookalikes. Having a list of comparison features, or even just comments like "no other species in x range will have y and z features" or "frustratingly similar to (these three other species) without examination of subgenital plates with a hand lens", has been absolutely invaluable.

The book at the top of the photo, "Dragonflies Through Binoculars" also has some good commentary on similar species, but the way it's set up is more cumbersome, it separates the text descriptions from the colour plates and range maps. I suppose if you wanted to flip through a set of photos really quickly to narrow down an ID, that setup would be useful, but it still leads to a lot of flipping back and forth and losing one's page. That books also does not include damselflies.

And finally, the little book at the bottom is the Stokes "Beginner's Guide To Dragonflies", which is exactly what is says on the tin. A good place to start and to look up really common stuff, but it obviously leaves out a lot of species and details.

iNaturalist records are going to be very helpful for practice, I think. I've already spent some time going through the odonates section, trying to confirm other people's IDs from the posted photos. At the very least, it'll get me familiar with the terminology and what features I need to be looking at for the various groups. And hopefully some of the more common or distinctive features will start sticking with me once I've seen them enough.

Road Trip

I find it amusing that I completely coincidentally mirrored many members of the Ontario Field Ornithologists this weekend. Apparently they had an event in Kingston, preceded by a field trip to Presqu'ile Provincial Park on Friday. I was in Kingston for the weekend on completely unrelated business, and took advantage of the trip east to stop at Presqu'ile on the way.

Of course, Friday morning was cool and windy and, eventually, rainy, so my birding at the park had very limited success. I thought I was going to get skunked completely out at Owen Point, but as I was working my way out onto the point itself to get a better view of the islands, a small flock came in to land on the beach nearby. Mostly Sanderlings, with a couple of Dunlin mixed in and four Black-bellied Plover (I really wanted them to be American Golden Plover, since I haven't seen those before, but my hopes were dashed when I saw the black wing-pits in flight).

Sanderling (left) and Dunlin (right)

Herring Gull, singing the song of its people

Owen Point, with bird-covered islands beyond

Sanderlings chasing the waves

Black-bellied Plover

I hit up the Marsh Boardwalk, too, because apparently I am a sucker for punishment. Similarly not much activity, but I did get good looks at a small group of Wood Ducks, and Wood Ducks are always worthwhile.

Thankfully, the rest of the weekend was gorgeous. I didn't get to look at any birds Saturday or Sunday, but the Kingston waterfront was spectacular nonetheless.

Finally!

The net has been broken in. :D

I'm not going to say that yelling madly as I chased it down helped, but it obviously didn't hurt. Frustration fueled by many misses clearly makes me quicker on the scoop.

And it was a new one for me, even! Unexpectedly difficult to ID, but that's mostly because all of my guide books are at home and I was working solely from google. "Dragonfly yellow and black" returns an unsurprisingly vast number of results. My coworker eventually got us down to the right genus, and from there it was an easy decision to name this one a Wandering Glider.