The winter bird listing season begins
A game birders across Canada play to help make the winter season more interesting is The Winter List.
Each province in Canada plays the game keeping a tally of all the species seen within the province during the period from Dec. 1 to the last day of February. In Newfoundland that list reaches up to a staggering 130 or more species. To achieve that kind total it is critical to make hay during the first days of December when lingering birds of fall migration are still around. The last white-rumped sandpipers on their way south to South American wintering grounds are usually still present in just the very first days of the December. There are also those lingering species that really should not be here at all this late. Usually I take the first day of December off work to help out on the list.
My plan was to scour the coves from Bay Bulls to Cappahayden. It was a pleasant morning to be out. Robins and flickers were feeding on the dogberries. Red-breasted mergansers, great cormorants and common loons were diving in calm coves. There was a kingfisher at Bay Bulls and another at Cape Broyle. A late orangecrowned warbler was the first touch of spice at Witless Bay. Jackpot
In Ferryland I hit a little jackpot of goodies. Among a large flock of juncos there were winter bonus birds in the form of a chipping sparrow and a claycoloured sparrow plus two more orange-crowned warblers. The adrenaline was starting to flow as I planned my next move but a text message from Ken Knowles disrupted my game plan. He had received a fragmented message from Chris Brown saying he had found an eared grebe at Peter’s River.
That is all it said. Eared grebe was not just another water bird but would be the first one ever seen in the province! There was nothing in the message about what the bird looked like or how far offshore it might have been. I tried to reach Chris by phone but he was out of the reception area. The eared grebe looks similar to a horned grebe, a regular winter species in the province, but Chris Brown is not one to be flippant about making such a claim. It took a couple minutes to wrap my head around the thought of throwing my day plan out the window and transferring the adrenaline flow over to a different target. I pushed firmly on the rare bird lever in my car, also known as the gas pedal, and flew toward Peter’s River located an hour away on the southern edge of the Avalon Peninsula.
Chris’s car was still there parked on the gravel behind the main beach at Peter’s River when I arrived. I saw him standing with his spotting scope way over by a gravel bar. I drove part way over the loose gravel and walked the rest. As I approached I could see Chris was smoking a cigar (he never smokes!) and had a hip flask in his hand. This was looking good. He was in a celebratory mood.
I took a swig from the flask and looked through Chris’s scope. There it was plain as day — Newfoundland and Labrador’s first ever eared grebe diving a few metres off the beach. Eared grebe is a common bird of the prairies in western Canada. In the winter they go to the southwestern United States and into Mexico. A very few stray to the east coast of North America each winter.
The next day a small horde of birders, mainly from the St. John’s area, visited Peter’s River and were not disappointed. The bird was easy to see but generally not so easy to photograph because of the openness of the beach scene. Those birders who waited until Sunday to look for the eared grebe came up empty handed. The bird was missing. I have a feeling it will turn up again in the coming weeks. The bird could easily over winter on Avalon Peninsula as its close relatives the horned grebe and red-necked grebe already do.
The eared grebe was a grand start to the Winter List Season. There was lots of other thunder on the opening weekend. That Burgeo black vulture, the only one ever to be seen in Newfoundland, returned from a brief absence to be ticked for the list. The very rare Pacific loon came back to St. Vincent’s, just down the beach from the eared grebe, for its fifth consecutive winter. The rare Trepassey Forster’s tern that appeared in late October was still present. Amazingly not one, but two grasshopper sparrows were at the Cape Race lighthouse. A spectacular Townsend’s warbler from western Canada was found by Alvan Buckley at Trepassey. The St. John’s white-eyed vireo was still present and Frank King found another one at Cappahayden. The Winter List is off to a riproaring start.