100+ km Bike Ride on Valentine's Day!

I never thought that weather conditions would allow Deryl to go on a 114.7 km bike ride on Valentine's Day!  He is doing a second consecutive Green Birding Year in Lambton County and hoped to add the Harris's Sparrow to his bird list by cycling to Bog Line.

It took an hour of waiting before it popped out of the bushes, but we finally got to see the Harris's Sparrow. Range maps of this species show it as a mid-western bird. They tend to wander a lot during migration and we have been lucky to have one spend the winter in Lambton County!

Once the Sparrow was documented, I drove to the Port Franks beach while Deryl cycled.

Our purpose in heading to the beach was to see the Black-legged Kittiwake that has been in the area for a few weeks. The Mud Creek outlet into Lake Huron is a popular feeding area for gulls and is a common location to see the Kittiwake.

This is NOT a Black-legged Kittiwake! We weren't able to find the Kittiwake, but it gave me the chance to photograph other gulls in flight. Ring-billed Gulls use a wide variety of foraging methods: walking on land, stamping their feet in shallow water to uncover small invertebrates; skimming shallow water for small fish; and nabbing insects out of the air. They steal food from other birds, hunt for small rodents, and scavenge along beaches, parks, and garbage dumps.

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Ring-billed_Gull/overview

Prior to starting the road trip, a pair of Northern Cardinals posed for their Valentine photo this morning!