A GREAT Day at Rondeau

It was a great day at Rondeau, for a number of reasons: it was cooler and much more comfortable to be out than the hot hazy humid days of late and the rain held off. But for birders, it was the report of a Great Kiskadee, a first occurrence for Ontario and Canada. This flycatcher's normal North American range is in southern Texas and Mexico, and many points a lot farther south. There are various extralimital occurrences, however, including as far north as South Dakota, Kansas and Tennessee. All of the North American records are hundreds of kilometres south of the Canadian border.

The word got out yesterday, September 7, when a local hiker captured a photo of an unusual bird along the Marsh Trail. After being uploaded to iNaturalist, it quickly got circulated amongst the birding community that a Great Kiskadee was present. A few birders arrived in time late yesterday to get a brief look at it before it went to roost for the night. This brings the Rondeau area bird checklist total to a respectable 366 species.

Today the Marsh Trail was almost literally crawling with birders as early as 6:30 a.m. It is likely that over the course of the day, at least 150 or more birders from far and wide ventured down the trail in search of this mega rarity. Fortunately all of the action was within the first 200 or so metres down the trail, making the effort to get to the precise location minimal. Not everyone saw it, unfortunately, as it only showed itself for a few moments at a time, and spent the majority of the time out of sight, but apparently not entirely out of hearing, so I'm told. With the brisk ENE wind and my less than ideal hearing, I didn't hear it clearly enough to be certain of its presence. But I did see it on two occasions, about an hour and a half apart.

For my first view, the light was flat, and against the bland sky it made capturing much detail of the bird extra difficult.

The second view was more distant, but with a better background it showed up a lot more clearly, although branches interfered with the focus so several of my photos had to be deleted.

There were many huge smiles of relief amongst those that saw this bird, of course.

During the extended periods in between the times this bird popped up, there was a good variety of other resident and migrant birds to be seen. Other species which made the birding GREAT were Great Egret.....

.....Greater Yellowlegs probing around in the washed up vegetation along the edge of the trail:

and Great Crested Flycatcher, although I didn't get a photo of the latter species.

There were vireos, grosbeaks and warblers, among others. I got 12 species of warbler in just this short distance, which was a greater diversity of warblers than some days in May!

There were several Palm Warblers.....

...and a cooperative Cape May Warbler.

It was great to see so many birders, some familiar and some not familiar, and the camaraderie was excellent. Several fellow bloggers were present, three of which were photographed together on Dwayne Murphy's phone, taken by Rondeau staff member Pilar Manorome. It can be seen here.

After leaving Rondeau, I decided to check out the Keith McLean Conservation Area to see if the young Snowy Egret was still around. It was, along with one of its GREAT cousins.

Snowy Egret

Just to complete this post with the GREAT theme, there was the occasional Great Blue Heron around as well.

 With all of the rarities that have shown up in Ontario so far in the last few weeks, what will be next???? What could be better than a Canadian first, as well as being fairly bright and colourful?