Point Pelee, Ontario 18 May 2005

Situated to the east of Detroit and to the south-west of Toronto, Point Pelee, a 10-kilometre sandspit with its southern point equal in latitude to the northern border of California, contains one of Canada’s smallest but most unusual national parks. A thin triangle jutting into Lake Erie at the southernmost point of Canada, the 20 square kilometre landscape boasts a unique blend of vegetation in the marshes, jungle-like Carolinian forest, Savannah grasslands and beachfront, supporting a complexity of wildlife.

The early attraction the peninsula had for the first people to come in search of game, continues in the overwhelming popularity the park has amongst bird watchers and day visitors: Point Pelee is one of Canada’s smallest national parks, but with a bird list of over 375 species and a reputation as one of North America’s top migrant traps this tiny oasis of green attracts nearly 400 000 visitors each year. (For more go to canadianparks.com/ontario/ppelenp and to Parks Canada - Point Pelee.)

There are days when things just go well. There’s no rhyme or reason to it, and no point trying to work it out - but when scheduling phoned me at home on May 14th to say that they’d just rostered me a trip on the 17th that gave me almost two days off in Toronto rather than the usual eighteen hours, I was delighted. Did someone know that this would place me within a few hours drive of the celebrated Point Pelee at the height of the spring migration? Did they also know that two good birding friends of mine from California, Jack Cole and Ed Frost, would be at Pelee for a week with a small group of friends, transport, and Park entrance tickets in their hands? Of course not: call it Fate, call it what you will - scheduling could have sent me to any corner of the world, but they decided instead to send me off birding (I mean, serving our customers to the best of my ability etc etc) in eastern North America in mid-May! Excellent…

As soon as scheduling hung up I went online to book a rental car from Toronto airport then phoned Jack in California to check when he was leaving for Pelee: tomorrow morning, he replied. I’ll see you in a couple of days, I said…

And so began what I would have to say was the most archetypal “Sleep can wait, I’m going birding” trip so far this year…

It takes about 90 minutes to drive from my house to Heathrow. The flight from London to Canada would take about seven hours and we were due to land at Toronto at about 17:30 local time. Whilst Toronto and Point Pelee are both in Ontario, Ontario is a big place. I was reliably informed that the drive down to Wheatley (the small town near to Pelee where we’d be staying) was about two and a half hours. It would take about 30 minutes to get the car sorted and on the road, and I’d be in the bed-and-breakfast by about 20:30 (or, put another way, at half-past one in the morning at home - about twelve hours after I’d started out). We could bird all the first day from first light until it was too dark to carry on, and on the second [which we spent at the superb Rondeau Provincial Park] we could start early again before I’d leave about 13:00 to drive the couple of hundred kilometers back to Toronto to meet the rest of the crew at 18:00 for the seven hour flight back home…

Easy…except, of course that it doesn’t take 30 minutes to get from an aircraft to a car-rental booth and into a car - it takes at least three times that. And it isn’t two and a half hours from Toronto to Wheatley during the afternoon rush-hour, it’s four (just as the rental-guy told me it would be). And the b&b, contrary to what the owners claimed, isn’t all that easy to find - especially when it’s dark and you can barely stay awake…

But then again, it’s May and it’s Pelee - I’d probably have walked if it had been the only way to get there…

So what makes the area so special? Geography and habitat. Point Pelee is a long spit of southern Canada that hangs down into Lake Erie towards the US State of Ohio. From a northerly migrating bird’s point of view it is the first point of land at one of Erie’s narrowest and southerly crossing-points: a haven of tall trees, rich wetlands, and an abundance of insect food. Migrants arriving after a long flight drop down out of the skies and are greeted with what must be the equivalent of an avian smorgasbord.

If they arrive on a weekend in mid-May they’re also greeted by what park personnel estimate is a staggering 20,000 birders - a mobile forest of green jackets and telescopes, and (if they understood English) what would be a schizophrenia-inducing babble of misidentification and wild guesswork…I’m sorry to sound incredulous, but how can anyone wearing 1000 dollars worth of optics shout out that they’ve “got a Canada Warbler” when they’re looking straight into a tree at a male Magnolia Warbler?
(Oh well, at least the migrants don’t get shot at anymore - unless they’re unfortunate enough to be a “first” for North America, which is a whole other disturbing and unsavoury story completely…).

Anyway, back to matters in hand. Like any migrant hot-spot there is a dependence on the “right” weather at Pelee: no wind or rain, no clouds or fog, no systems swirling to the left or the right and birds have a clear run to their favoured breeding-grounds and can pass high overhead or to the side. Potential vagrants heading east instead of west can re-orientate, or end up even further off course and miss the Point altogether. Binoculars will remain unfocussed, notebooks unfilled, the “oohs” and aahs” unsounded…

I’ll say right from the outset that as something of a vagrant to Pelee myself (I’m not sure now where I expected to be on May 18th this year but it certainly wasn’t at Point Pelee with some friends from California) I had a superb time, but according to most of the comments made by seasoned regulars I overheard, things were “very quiet this year”.

One of the volunteer wardens who was driving the little wagon that shuttles birders between the Park Interpretive Centre and the Point itself said that she’d been seeing good numbers of Blackburnian Warblers but low numbers of pretty much everything else.

There was a definite lack of “star rarities” (the Great Tit reported earlier in the week had moved on (I get those in my garden at home so I wasn’t too worried), as had - more importantly, to me at least - a very showy Kirtland’s Warbler*, which hopefully had swung west and found itself a mate amongst the Michigan jack-pines) - and most migrants were present in only low numbers. We only saw Yellow Warblers (left) and Baltimore Orioles in the sort of numbers where ennui sets in - which is far more a comment on a birder’s desire to constantly make new sightings than whether a Yellow Warbler or Baltimore Oriole is an attractive species or not - but both species breed in the Park so were expected to be common.

Whole groups of birds were in fact more or less absent: it took a long while to find our first catharus thrushes for instance (a single Swainson’s and a Veery within 100 metres of each other as it turned out), and after the initial excitement of seeing four brilliant Scarlet Tanagers in one tree (a very tall tree and just far enough off the trail to make photography difficult) we didn’t see another all day.

There was the odd slight surprise to keep us going - an Eastern Screech-Owl discovered in the midst of a noisy crowd of Grackles and American Robins, a flock of Chimney Swifts whirling over Wheatley at dusk - but I’m sure all present would say that it wasn’t one of Pelee’s more outsanding days.

 
Scarlet Tanager and Eastern Screech-owl

The photos on this page are pretty much a snapshot of what we saw of course, and don’t really do justice to the day. Many birds flit through the tangled canopies of trees way out of camera range, and many more flick up out of the undergrowth and disappear again before their ID details have even been registered properly. Unlike at some coastal hot-spots where migrants arrive after a gruelling sea-crossing there is usually less in the way of “exhausted” migrants crawling around the feet of stunned birders or using every last ounce of energy to cling onto a twig before keeling over dead at Pelee - and to be honest I’ve never been sure that photos taken under those conditions are all that good to look at. I prefer my migrants active and alive rather than torpid or dying…a little less active might have been better of course, but what can you do…?

Photographic opportunities aside, we ended hours of tramping trails and peering into tree canopies with a reasonable list which included 16 warbler and 5 vireo species, and you’d have to be one extremely blasé British birder not to be impressed by a very close male Blackburnian Warbler whatever your expectations for the day as a whole.

Blackburnian Warbler: for a gallery go to Blackburnian

I may be tired most of the time (especially so this time), but I’m thankfully a long way from being blasé yet. The day was very enjoyable, helped somewhat (surprisingly given my grumbles over mis-identifications) by the slightly amateurish feel to birding in Canada which is actually quite relaxing - there’s far less of the frenetic, charged atmosphere that has come to epitomise and make British twitching such a stressful activity. Yes, North American birders want to see lifers, but you don’t get the feeling that for most of them their lives will be ruined if they don’t. Just an observation…

The photos below (some of which link to larger galleries) were all taken within Point Pelee Park, where we stayed from about 08:00a.m to 18:00p.m, before leaving to visit Hillman Marsh 10km to the northeast - principally to look for Little Gulls and lingering shorebirds: photos from that part of the day are at Hillman Marsh.

Chestnut-sided Warbler

Bay-breasted Warbler

Baltimore Oriole

Orchard Oriole

Swainson’s Thrush

Veery

Carolina Wren

Red-eyed Vireo

White-eyed Vireo

Yellow-throated Vireo

Least Flycatcher

Eastern Wood Peewee

Red-winged Blackbird

Finally, thanks again to the group - Jack Cole, Ed Frost (Ed - where’d you disappeared to when I took this?), Larry and Jane Wilson, Michael Burns, and Patti Sutch - for letting me join them at such short notice, and for their hospitality and friendliness - it was much appreciated.

*
Kirtland’s Warbler Update - July 2005

Good news - I missed a lifer, but perhaps it did find it’s way home after all:
Michigan Department of Natural Resources officials have released annual survey information indicating the state’s population of the endangered Kirtland’s Warbler is increasing.

Biologists, researchers and volunteers counted 1,415 singing males during the 2005 official census period. This count exceeds the 1,348 males observed in 2004, and represents the largest number recorded since monitoring began. The census was started in 1951, and has been conducted annually since 1971. The lowest numbers were recorded in 1974 and 1987, when only 167 singing males were found.

Trip List (note, numbers marked with a “+” are approximate):
English and scientific names mainly from “The North American Bird Guide”, Sibley D, Pica Press, 2000:

Great Northern Diver/Common Loon Gavia immer 1; Double-crested Cormorant Phalacrocorax auritus 20+; Canada Goose Branta canadensis 10+; Red-breasted Merganser Mergus serrator 1; Mourning Dove Zenaida macroura 20+; Eastern Screech-owl Otus asio 1; Chimney Swift Chaetura pelagica 30+; Ruby-throated Hummingbird Archilochus alexandri 3-4; Red-bellied Woodpecker Melanerpes aurifrons 1; Downy Woodpecker Picoides pubescens 3-4; Eastern Wood-Pewee Contopus virens 3; Least Flycatcher Empidonax minimus 5-6; Great Crested Flycatcher Myiarchus tyrannulus 1; Eastern Kingbird Tyrannus tyrannus 3; Red-eyed Vireo Vireo olivaceus 4; White-eyed Vireo Vireo griseus 2; Yellow-throated Vireo Vireo flavifrons 1; Blue-headed Vireo Vireo solitarius 2; Warbling Vireo Vireo gilvus 1; American Crow Corvus brachyrhynchos 3; Purple Martin Progne subis 20+; Tree Swallow Tachycineta bicolor 20+; Cliff Swallow Petrochelidon pyrrhonota 1; Barn Swallow Hirundo rustica c) 10; Black-capped Chickadee Poecile atricapilla 2; Red-breasted Nuthatch Sitta canadensis 1; Carolina Wren Thryothorus ludovicianus 2; House Wren Troglodytes aedon 2; Blue-grey Gnatcatcher 2; Veery 2; Swainson’s Thrush Cathurus ustulatus 3-4; Grey Catbird 6-8; American Robin Turdus migratorius c)50; European Starling Sturnus vulgaris 20+; Cedar Waxwing 2 (left); Tennessee Warbler 2; Orange-crowned Warbler 1; Northern Parula 1; Yellow Warbler 20+; Chestnut-sided Warbler 5-6; Magnolia Warbler 4-5; Black-throated Warbler 1f; Yellow-rumped Warbler 2; Black-throated Warbler 1f; Blackburnian Warbler 4-5; Bay-breasted Warbler 4-5; Blackpoll Warbler 3; Black-and-white Warbler 2; American Redstart 5-6; Common Yellowthroat 3-4; Canada Warbler 2; Scarlet Tanager 4; Eastern Towhee Pipilo arthyrophthalmus 1; Chipping Sparrow Spizella passerina 1; Song Sparrow Melospiza melodia 2; Lincoln’s Sparrow 1; White-crowned Sparrow 10+; Northern Cardinal 4-5; Rose-breasted Grosbeak 3-4; Indigo Bunting 3; Red-winged Blackbird Agelaius phoeniceus 20+; Brown-headed Cowbird Molothrus ater 8-10; Common Grackle Quiscalus quiscula 20+; American Goldfinch Carduelis tristis 4; House Sparrow Passer domesticus 10+

All photographs © Charlie Moores.