My work over the last 5 years has involved me in a crazy amount of travel. As anyone who follows my facebook pages or (more recently) this blog knows, whenever the opportunity presents, I try to squeeze in a bit of birding. When other people go sightseeing or chilling at the bar, I can be found traipsing parks and gardens, forests and fields, mountains and deserts in search of whatever local goodies there are.
This time my travel had me on a flight from Australia to Canada, via Hong Kong, arriving into Toronto on Friday evening having been travelling for the best part of 28 hours. The next two days were to be spent with my fellow area chairs deciding which papers would be accepted for IEEE CVPR, now the top-ranked Computer Science conference in the world. Consequently I had not given any thought to birding (though of course I had brought my optics just in case).
At the end of Saturday, day 1, it started to become apparent there was a chance we would finish early afternoon on Sunday instead of much later, after dark. Tossing and turning on Saturday night in my downtown hotel, unable to sleep with jetlag, I used some waking time to trawl ebird to see if there was a way I could fill the potential bonus hours with birding. Sure enough, Tommy Thompson Park looked like it was cycling distance or short taxi ride from downtown. It is reclaimed land stretching like a long hand into lake Ontario. Consequently in spring it is a major migration hot-spot, north-bound birds finding it as the first landfall after crossing the lake; more than 300 species have been seen here. In winter diversity is of course much lower, but it was clear from recent ebird reports that it held a great selection of winter wildfowl (including one or two potential lifers for me), and even more exciting, is a reliable winter spot for Snowy Owl. I have only ever seen one Snowy before, a young bird that Tom Bedford and I twitched in Cornwall in 2009.
I arrived on site at about 14.30 with about 3 hours of daylight. It’s a long walk to get from the park entrance to the good birding spots, and I was working somewhat on instinct. Fortunately, however, it was clear this is a popular local birding and photography spot and I quizzed a couple of locals who obliged with some suggestions.
I walked along the road for about 3 km until I came to a pontoon bridge where on either side there was a good array of wildfowl on either side, in open, ice-free areas. Lifer Trumpeter Swans were very approachable;
lots of Goldeneye,
a few Greater Scaup, half-a-dozen Canada Geese.
A group of six Long-tailed Duck including three stunning males was my best ever encounter with this superb duck (I would end up seeing 100s).
A single brown diving duck had me confused until I realized this was a imm. male White-winged Scoter.
Bufflehead is a stunning little diving duck that I had hoped to see here and after initially picking up a fairly distant female I found a superb male. He too was distant, but gave brilliant bin and scope views. A few days later I would have even better encounters in the bays around Victoria, but without camera.
Annoyingly I did not find any Redheads which should have been here in some numbers, but which eluded me.
Just beyond the pontoon I bumped into some more photographers who had just seen a Snowy Owl. They pointed me to another trail off the road, about a km along. A few Trumpeter Swans took to the air:
As I walked I kept my eyes peeled, though not really with any great expectation. From the trail I saw a white blob on the grass from the corner of my eye. This sort of thing almost always turns out to be a rock or a tree trunk. But a quick double-take, just to be sure and surely the blob had moved! I grabbed my bins and pulled into a focus a stunning Snowy Owl. It had its back to me, eating recently caught prey and after each bite would look around, twisting its neck 180 as only owls can. As I watched, I realised there was already another photographer here, crouched behind a bund, and I approached carefully to the bund and managed a few pics of my own.
Annoyingly, at this point another photographer, approaching from a different direction, and dressed in a bright red puffer jacket, got onto the bird and – sticking out like a sore thumb – gradually got closer and closer until he inevitably flushed it.
Fortunately it was relocated on the ice of the lagoon. I got some nice scope views in this more scenic setting before the dickhead again flushed it to an even more distant point on the ice. At least he then then departed leaving me to enjoy some alone-time with this stunning bird. Only my second ever Snowy Owl after twitching the Zennor bird in Cornwall with Tom Bedford in 2009.
Two days later, visiting old friends from Oxford who now live in Victoria, BC, I spent the day walking with Jonathan around the picturesque town and coastline. We ejoyed a superb pub lunch in The Snug, and I managed to find dozens of Bufflehead in the town’s numerous beautiful bays, my best ever views of Harlequin Duck, and lifer Hooded Merganser, or “Alien Duck” as I think they should be called. Sadly I was walking without camera, and the best I could manage was a couple of record shots and poor video on my phone.
