High Park, Toronto, Canada
20 May 2006

Having birded in a wet and cold Newark on the 16th, I found myself in a very wet and cold Toronto on the 18th trying to find migrants in the city’s beautiful 399 acre High Park. I remarked on my Newark post how I seemed to be obsessed with the weather, and it struck me in Toronto why that was: as the rain dribbled in streams down my back and my trousers became plastered to my legs, all I could think about was that in my knock-off North Face rucksack (bought in Bangkok for about 15USD), wrapped in a plastic laundry bag picked up in a hotel in the Middle East, was my expensive Canon 30D and 100-400L lens…which according to the sumptiously detailed “How to” booklet that came with the camera, is neither waterproof nor drip-proof. In fact, electronic cameras fear water as much as a rabid cat does (more so probably - the cat wouldn’t explode in a storm of sparks and short-circuiting chips if it got wet). It was - I began to reflect - not a good decision to bring a camera with me…

Having said that, when I’d left the hotel at 08:00 the rain was only “threatening” rather than “real and present”. There would be migrants dripping from the trees (it’s the middle of May after all), and I would be getting unforgettable views of them…I needed my camera…

High Park, Toronto’s finest metro area park, certainly looks like it should hold good numbers of migrants. As well as open areas of grass for everyday visitors, there is a large lake (which a Caspian Tern was fishing over when I first arrived) with a reedbed at the far end which held a couple of Black-crowned Night Herons, and several well-wooded canyons that I’d loved to have picked up and moved wholesale to a coastal migrant hot-spot in the UK: they’d have been absolutely buzzing with birds…Unfortunately for the first few hours all that dripped from the trees on this particular morning was water. Most migrants had either moved on or drowned.

Warbling Vireo

The odd Warbling Vireo (my first of the year) sung fitfully from somewhere in the gloom, but it was pretty quiet otherwise. I seriously began to question my grip on reality in fact - it really was that wet and I could have stayed indoors after all. But, you know, once you’re soaked through and can’t really get much wetter there’s something quite liberating about wandering through woodland when the rain’s bouncing off the leaves above you and jumping into the puddles below. Even in urban parks like this one the sound of traffic on the highways is muted when it’s raining heavily, and of course you’ll more or less have the place to yourself. It makes a change sometimes to let your concentration go off and do its own thing, while you just allow yourself to ‘fit in’ to the background. Very relaxing. Besides, birding should sometimes be elemental, and it’s good to be reminded that life is often hard and uncomfortable for forms of life that can’t get back to a warm hotel room and a hot bath.

Male (left) and female (right) Red-winged Blackbirds

Eventually - and remarkably I thought at the time - the rain eased off and the clouds thinned out enough for a few patches of blue to show through. By this time I only had about an hour left before I had to get back to the hotel, but the effect on the birds was almost instant: Red-winged Blackbirds and Common Grackles materialised from the reeds, Tree Swallows and a few Barn Swallows chased over the lake, I watched a Swainson’s Thrush seemingly appear from underneath a leaf, noticed a female Black and White Warbler was picking its way unconcernedly along a branch as if had been there all morning, and the Yellow Warbler in the photos below was singing as if the world was a wonderful place after all and now was the time to get on with persuading all those unseen female Yellow Warblers that today was the day to get down to some serious reproduction…

Yellow Warbler

A good time to have a camera after all!

More birds appeared: not migrants still on their way somewhere else probably, but recently-arrived birds that were on territory - several very vocal Northern Orioles, a male Orchard Oriole (another first for the year) singing from a tree-top, and yet more Warbling Vireos (the only vireo species I saw strangely enough). A pair of Yellowthroats were the only other warblers I could find.

A pristine male American Robin made the day especially worthwhile though when it perched just long enough in a cloud of cherry blossom to give me a real “Springtime in Toronto” photo that I would be glad to sell to the city authorities (in return for a hefty donation to my carbon offsetting campaign of course…). Quite nice really…

American Robin

I’m fully aware that this isn’t quite the helpful trip report I usually aim at - but there are occasions when you see so little of a place that it’s difficult to write something useful: I’m afraid this was one of those times. I’m sure in the right weather High Park is about as good as you’ll find in downtown Toronto: it’s not Pelee or Rondeau, but then again you can easily get to High Park on public transport or in a taxi (it cost me just over 20CAD each way) and if you’re a birder on a very tight schedule that’s likely to be just as important a part of choosing where to go birding as what birds you might see…

All photographs copyright Charlie Moores.