December 16th, 2013

On Saturday, I participated in the Christmas bird count with part-time outdoor-ed-guy, Adam Rooke, and long-time outdoor-ed-guy-wanna-be, Ralph Beaumont.

We started our day of bird-counting at Laurel Creek at 6:30 am. We called for owls, and got one screech owl and one great-horned owl to make appearances. Then things turned a little snowy and windy – not the best bird-watching conditions. We went to the mill race in St. Jacobs and walked the river trail, and then walked the property at the Camp Heidelberg Outdoor Education Centre. We also did some driving around country roads, but mostly just saw crows and Canada Geese.

At the end, I was kind of disappointed with our total of 26 species and 1400 individual birds. It sounds like a lot of birds, but we saw 567 Canada Geese, and 507 crows. 500 geese were sitting in one field.

When my birding buddies abandoned me, I went back to the Laurel Creek Nature Centre to warm up. I was looking out the back window at a picnic table buried in snow, and I saw a bird throwing snow around in front of it. It disappeared under the table, and seemed to have a rusty-coloured back. It popped out from under the picnic table facing me, and it had a white breast, with dark streaks. At first I thought it was a thrush, but then it turned sideways. It had a longer beak than a thrush, and the upper bill kind of curved downwards.

It was a brown thrasher! This is a bird that should have migrated south a few months ago. You can read all about brown thrashers here: http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/brown_thrasher/lifehistory

I looked on ebird.org, a popular website for people to post their bird sightings, and no one on the site had seen a brown thrasher in Ontario since October. I wondered if I had been mistaken. I wondered if anyone would believe me if I said I saw a brown thrasher sitting in the snow on December 14.

So I went back to Laurel Creek on December 15th, and sure enough, out popped the bird in the same place. This time it was more in the open, and it was a brown thrasher for sure. I ran and got a camera, and while it posed nicely, I pushed the off button instead of the shutter button. Ugh.

Anyway, I did manage to get a couple of so-so pictures. Here is the best one. Happy birding!