| A big thanks goes out to everyone who participated in The Kensington Conservancy's Birding Big Day on September 8th! We had eight teams consisting of nineteen participants record a total of 101 different bird species over the course of nine hours in the Central Algoma area. The idea behind this Birding Big Day was for each team to go out and see how many different species they could find. There was no prize attached to first place, it was just a friendly competition. Birding could begin at 7:00 am and go until 4:00pm. |  Broad-winged Hawk - Jean Paul |
The event was participation by donation, with all the proceeds going towards a future bird conservation project in the Central Algoma area. We raised a total of $550, which is awesome! If anyone would like to still make a contribution to this fund, click here and make sure to choose "Birding Big Day" from the drop down menu when selecting a campaign. There are no concrete plans as to what the bird conservation project will be yet, so if anyone has any ideas, pass them along to me!
For me personally, it was a very fun and busy day. I was teamed up with my dad, Ron, and we left my house bright and early in order to make it to the Echo Bay viewing platform before the competition officially started at 7:00am, with a target of getting 60 species for the day. We arrived about ten minutes early and it was hard to just sit and wait and not start counting all the birds we were seeing and hearing. As soon as 7:00am hit, we added American Bittern to our list, as one had been sitting nearby since we arrived. A couple minutes later, the Virginia Rail we heard at 6:59am called again, allowing us to count it. We managed to add Sora and Marsh Wren here as well, two species I wasn't counting on getting.
For me personally, it was a very fun and busy day. I was teamed up with my dad, Ron, and we left my house bright and early in order to make it to the Echo Bay viewing platform before the competition officially started at 7:00am, with a target of getting 60 species for the day. We arrived about ten minutes early and it was hard to just sit and wait and not start counting all the birds we were seeing and hearing. As soon as 7:00am hit, we added American Bittern to our list, as one had been sitting nearby since we arrived. A couple minutes later, the Virginia Rail we heard at 6:59am called again, allowing us to count it. We managed to add Sora and Marsh Wren here as well, two species I wasn't counting on getting.
 American Bittern - Carter Dorscht | Next, we made our way through the Bar River Flats then on to Pumpkin Point. We were quickly adding species to our list as we went, which was great. It took about five seconds to hear the resident Red-bellied Woodpecker call at the end of Pumpkin Point and there were nine Pied-Billed Grebes all together in the open water visible from Centennial Park, something I don't think I've seen before. We hurried over to the Bruce Mines sewage lagoons, where we picked up Northern Shoveler, Bufflehead and Blue-winged Teal. We took the back roads back towards Desbarats, where we saw over 100 Turkey Vultures near Northern Quality Meats and a Brown Thrasher on Government Road, just east of Gordon Lake Road. |
It was then time to hit up St. Joseph Island. We raced down to Fort St. Joseph and walked around there for a while, where we finally got our first and only Bald Eagle of the day. We worked our way back north along the west end of the island and back towards Desbarats, arriving at the TKC Conservation Centre just before 4:00pm. In total, my dad and I ended up with 79 species.
| Once all the teams arrived back at the TKC Conservation Centre, we dined on some great potluck food and tallied up all the birds that we saw. It was great to hear about all the birds that the other teams got, as everyone had a fantastic day and saw a lot of species. There were no real rare birds observed throughout the day, but there were a couple birds a little late heading south: Great Crested Flycatcher, Eastern Kingbird and Marsh Wren.  Here is a list, in taxonomic order, of all 101 species that were observed by all the participants: Canada Goose Wood Duck Blue-winged Teal Northern Shoveler American Wigeon Mallard Green-winged Teal Ring-necked Duck Lesser Scaup Bufflehead Hooded Merganser Common Merganser Ruffed Grouse Sharp-tailed Grouse Wild Turkey Pied-billed Grebe Rock Pigeon Mourning Dove Ruby-throated Hummingbird Virginia Rail Sora American Coot Sandhill Crane Spotted Sandpiper Greater Yellowlegs Ring-billed Gull Herring Gull Common Loon Double-crested Cormorant American Bittern Great Blue Heron Turkey Vulture Osprey Northern Harrier Sharp-shinned Hawk Bald Eagle Broad-winged Hawk Red-tailed Hawk Belted Kingfisher Yellow-bellied Sapsucker Red-bellied Woodpecker Downy Woodpecker Hairy Woodpecker Pileated Woodpecker Northern Flicker American Kestrel Merlin Least Flycatcher Eastern Phoebe Great Crested Flycatcher Eastern Kingbird Blue-headed Vireo Philadelphia Vireo Red-eyed Vireo Blue Jay American Crow Common Raven Barn Swallow Black-capped Chickadee Red-breasted Nuthatch White-breasted Nuthatch Marsh Wren Golden-crowned Kinglet Eastern Bluebird Swainson's Thrush Hermit Thrush American Robin Gray Catbird Brown Thrasher European Starling Cedar Waxwing Purple Finch Pine Siskin American Goldfinch Chipping Sparrow Dark-eyed Junco White-throated Sparrow Savannah Sparrow Song Sparrow Lincoln's Sparrow Swamp Sparrow Bobolink Red-winged Blackbird Rusty Blackbird Common Grackle Ovenbird Black-and-white Warbler Tennessee Warbler Nashville Warbler Common Yellowthroat Magnolia Warbler Bay-breasted Warbler Yellow Warbler Palm Warbler Pine Warbler Yellow-rumped Warbler Black-throated Green Warbler Wilson's Warbler Rose-breasted Grosbeak Indigo Bunting House Sparrow |  We plan on doing this event again in the spring, likely in mid-to-late May, where we should be able to easily blow by 100 species for the day. So stay tuned for that!  Song Sparrow - Jane Smith  Merlin - Jean Paul  Blue Jay - Carter Dorscht |
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