Rondeau Day 2

The next morning we drove down to the southernmost parking lot and hiked the South Point Trail.

We drove by a wild turkey on our way to the trailhead.

The trail went through the woods and then out onto the beach on the south end of the peninsula.  Leo saw a Canada warbler, a lifer for him.

On the beach we saw semipalmated plover, 

Dunlin,

Ruddy turnstones 

and unidentified small sandpipers.

An enjoyable hike but it got a little hot and mosquitoes by the end.  So we stopped by at the park store and had an icecream.

In the afternoon we drove to Erieau, a resort town  located on the end of a peninsula adjacent to Rondeau Park.

There's a long beach here and people were actually swimming.  The lake was a bit scummy here.

We walked down the breakwater 

to the miniature  light house.

Back to Hillman Marsh and on to Rondeau Provincial Park

 

Our last day at Point Pelee, we went back to Hillman Marsh.  The best birding was in the trail to the marsh, wherever got good views of an indigo bunting (above) and a bay-breasted warbler.

Lots of tree swallows.

The Merlin app identified a field sparrow calling.  We got him to respond to a callback, but it never came out in the open.  Too bad. A lifer for both of us and such a dearth of sparrows in the Erie Lake area.

In the afternoon we drove to our last destination, Rondeau Provincial Park.  

Past the avenue of greenhouses again

We set up in our last campsite for the trip.

And walked down to the Black Oak trail.  Here we saw a plethora of house and Carolina wrens.

Checking out the wrens.

We found the beach.  

(There is a lot of beach, it's a peninsula.)

On our way back we spotted a kildeer on the side of the road.

It went into broken wing mode.  I was very excited as I'd never witnessed this before.

Which meant there was a nest nearby.  We looked and looked and couldn't find it.  Then I saw Leo nearly step on what looked like a pile of dried up dog turds.

It was a nest with several baby kildeers.  

Fortunately, disaster was averted and we let the kildeer family be.  Looking back we noticed these 2 traffic cones that were put there to keep us away from the nest!

Holiday Beach and Hillman's Marsh

Today we visited two other local birding spots in the Point Pelee area. 

 First we went to Holiday Beach  but not to see the beach.  It has trails and boardwalks around an extensive e marsh.

Viburnum shrub

Here we saw prothonatary warblers and a red-headed woodpecker.

x

They also have a purple martin nesting colony here.

The next spot was Hillman's marsh.

.

Where we saw 

egrets,

Canada Geese,

And hundreds of dunlin

And black-bellied plover.

We decided to drive into Leamington to look for local specialties to bring back as gifts.

But Leamington wasn't set up for tourism at all.  It turned out the businesses all catered to the agricultural workers, so money wiring companies, numerous taco shops, a Venezuelan nightclub.

Caught a fish

Zz22

To the Tip and other Birding Spots

If you were to leave Detroit and head south what's the first foreign country you'd come to?  Trick question, it's Canada!

Did you know Point Pelee National Park is the southernmost point in Canada.  Specifically Middle Island south of Pelee Island.  But the farthest south in Canada I'll probably ever get is the tip of Point Pelee.

Which is where we were headed this morning because that's where the birds make first landfall after their night flight over Lake Erie.  We'd been told the songbird migration was pretty much over but the shorebirds were still arriving.

It was 20C when we got up so I threw caution to the wind and wore shorts, which I would live to regret.

The shuttles weren't operating yet so we hiked down to the spit.  We arrived to a crowd of 20 people jostling for a view 

Of the jostle of pelicans, gulls and shorebirds.

Checking the photos later we found dunlins and a Caspian tern, both new species for our trip.

Everyone was waiting for a neotropical cormorant to show up. Unfortunately there was a mass of relentless what-they-called stableflies attacking us, apparently impervious to Deet, that kept biting our bare legs, and I had to call time out so we took the shuttle back to the visitor centre.  (Sorry, but we've seen neotropical Cormorants before, been to Mexico, been to Florida, been to Costa Rica.) 

Changed into long pants, hopped back on the shuttle and went back down to the tip.

Most of the birds had moved on but still a few pelicans around.

We walked to the so-called sparrow field, where we were hopeful we'd find some eastern sparrows, but no sparrows at all. Where are all the sparrows in Ontario?

No sparrows. Just the ubiquitous yellow warblers and red-winged blackbirds.

The highlight of the day was coming upon a feeding frenzy of mergansers and Bonaparte gulls feeding on what must have been a school of fish.

Our next stop was the marsh boardwalk. By now it was really hot and we walked around the boardwalk.  But there were hardly any birds to be seen.  

Except for lots of barn swallows nesting under the tower.

Lastly we visited Kopegaren Woods, a small tract of untouched forest in between the agricultural fields.

It was fairly quiet but at least cooler than in the open.  And we spotted a red-bellied woodpecker.

Later in the evening when it cooled down we walked around Wheatley campground where we found a beautiful wood warbler and listened to its lovely song.

Bird of the Day

We also saw this eastern cottontail.