New Year’s Day Birding!

A New Year; A New Birding list! We started in Canatara Park for our New Year's Birding tour. The sun gave the impression of "warmish" weather, but the wind chill brought the temperature down to -20 degrees, close to the Lake Huron shoreline.

An American Robin was our first find of the day. 3 were found in total and this individual was found when the sun was a little higher in the sky!

An unexpected find was an Eastern Screech Owl in a cavity where we had not spotted one before. He was very content to sit there, soaking up the sun with fluffed up feathers aiding in heat retention!

A few White-breasted Nuthatches were in the area.

Brown Creeper... just creeping along the bark in search of bugs hiding in the crevices of bark. They hop up a tree trunk in a spiral motion, then fly to the base of a nearby tree to continue the upward spiral action. The well camouflaged bird is slightly easier to pick out in the lower photo.

A beautiful male Northern Cardinal, posing in the brush.

Downy Woodpecker, male. He made a lot of tapping noises as he search for food under the bark.

Our next stop was Lake Huron and the St. Clair River, north of the Bluewater Bridges. A male and 2 female Bufflehead were 3 of many ducks in the St. Clair River. Most were far from shore. Once lower Lake Huron becomes more clogged with ice, ducks may be found closer to shore.

Male Long-tail, in Lake Huron

Gull lift off! Shortly after seeing them take flight, a Golden Eagle soared past at the Sarnia Bay. The Eagle has been spotted locally over the past few days and we were very happy to find it in our "home" area! (Although the gulls and other birds didn't share in our enthusiasm.)

4 Mute Swans flying towards the river.

Shark at the Sarnia Yacht Club! A friend invited us to walk the roads in the private club to scan for birds. It gave us a different perspective for bird viewing since we could see the dock areas more clearly.

We also traveled inland a bit for a rural tour where we found about 150 Snow Buntings!

At the lagoons, buried amongst MANY Canada Geese, was a pair of Greater White-fronted Geese. The species migrates west of the Great Lakes and west of Hudson Bay, but a few are found each year in Southern Ontario. A faint white line along the side of both birds caught Deryl's attention. Otherwise they likely would have been overlooked.

Greater White-fronted Goose is at the very centre of the photo. It has an orange bill and is smaller than the surrounding Canada Geese.

Ring-necked Pheasants can sometimes be found along the road near a former Pheasant farm. They were introduced from Asia in the 1880's and quickly became one of North America's most popular upland game birds.

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

In total, 43 species were found to start off 2026!