Tuesday 1 January 2013

Jan 1st - Killdeer and New Year's resolutions

A bit of a tradition for many birders is to work off their hangovers by going out birding on January 1st -kicking of a fresh year of birding and listing. I'm not a rabid lister like so many others and have never kept a "year list", but there's something symbolic about getting out on Jan one.

This year I have two New Year's resolutions related to birding. Firstly, enter at least one e-bird checklist into e-bird every single day of the year. This takes a bit of discipline but otherwise shouldn't be too hard. A checklist can be made just by looking out the window at the bird feeder, or recording what I see while driving to work. The trick will be to do it everyday, and will hopefully make me a better note taker, recording numbers of birds and not just a species tally. I hope to also enter a lot of e-butterfly checklists but for obvious reasons I can't do that everyday.

Second resolution is to see 300+ bird species in Ontario this year - not to be confused with doing a big year! I am NOT doing a big year. For the first time ever I will keep a dedicated year list. 300 shouldn't be hard to reach as long as I get out birding during all the seasons and make a bit of an effort to see some birds I might let slip by in past years. For example, birds like Brant, various shorebirds, etc. you could easily miss from year to year without a moderate amount of effort and "chasing". Caveat - if I do any worldly travels I might miss out on 300, but if I'm birding overseas I'm o.k. with that.

January 5th is this year's Fisherville CBC, so today wasn't quite count week but I went out to scout the area anyways. Only real highlight was a Killdeer that was on the shoreline at 158 Bluewater Parkway, east of Selkirk P.P. Wish I had of snapped a grab photo for the blog, but I didn't think about it at the time. You'll have to settle for this highly cropped photo of two Bald Eagle's hanging out near their nest.


4 comments:

  1. Some good resolutions! I managed both in 2012 so it is definitely doable - I'll look forward to reading about your progress!

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  2. Thanks - so far so good! I think I got the idea for 300 from your blog!

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  3. The Balds Eagle nest off of Fisherville Rd in Haldimand County which can be seen from Lakeshore Road is being removed as we speak. Two cranes, one with men in a bucket and the other attached to the nest are either moving it or dismantling it to make way for IWT's.

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  4. I happened to drive by that exact nest today when the two cranes were there about to take it down. I had no idea they were taking it down until you posted this message. I also saw lots of local vehicles and a few cop cars: was there some local opposition to this nest removal? Did you take any photos of the nest being removed? I'd be happy to post them here.

    Pretty sad that we are now removing Eagle Nests to make way for "Green Energy".

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