PRBY - Jan 2, 2011 day list.

Sunday was a great day. Waking at 5 am. McMuffin breakfast. Standing in the cold for hours. Being crammed into a car with 5 other people. Freezing wind and snow blowing in my face all day. Like I said, Sunday was a great day. Except for the McDonalds breakfast, it was disgusting. I ate it as an homage to Morgan Spurlock. What made Sunday so great was spending 14 hours looking at birds. OK, we looked at birds for about 6 hours, the rest was spent driving from place to place.


I was lucky enough to be able to bird the Niagara/Hamilton area with some great people. Those people were Richard Pope, Margaret Bain and Hugh Currie. Richard is the author of a great book about his own big year titled, The Reluctant Twitcher. I highly recommend reading it. Even if you aren't a birder, he's a funny guy and it comes through in his writing. These three are great friends that bird together all the time. You can tell by the way they go at each other all day long. It was nice to have Richard take a shot at me here and there, making me feel like one of the gang. A highlight of the day was that I was first to find the day's last bird, a Little Gull, flying amongst hundreds of similar looking gulls. To that, Richard might say, "Oh, this again? Are we still going to be hearing about this Little Gull in December?"


Here's the days final list.

Canada Goose

American Crow

Bald Eagle

Ring-billed Gull

Herring Gull

Great Black-backed Gull

Common Goldeneye

White-winged Scoter

Red-breasted Merganser

Surf Scoter

Long-tailed Duck

Mallard

Common Merganser

American Goldfinch

Greater Scaup

Northern Pintail

King Eider

Glaucous Gull

Bonaparte's Gull

Lesser Black-backed Gull

Iceland Gull

Red-bellied Woodpecker

Downy Woodpecker

Tufted Titmouse

House Finch

House Sparrow

White-breasted Nuthatch

Northern Cardinal

Slate-coloured Junco

Tundra Swan

Canvasback

American Coot

Thayer's Gull

Bufflehead

American Black Duck

Double-crested Cormorant

Hooded Merganser
Gadwall
Little Gull


Bird of the day would go to the Little Gull. Mostly because I found it. Richard, that's the last time you'll hear that from me.