Garth Riley led another successful Bird Walk on January 13th at Humber Bay West. The forecast of 15cm of snow on Friday night turned into rain, so aside from a very strong wind, we had good weather for the walk. We haven’t held many walks at the Humber Bay parks since construction started at Humber Bay East, but as this walk proved, the remaining accessible park area can be very productive.
We walked west from the parking lot to Amos Waites Park. There weren’t huge numbers of waterfowl, but the high winds were keeping a nice variety sheltering in the bay. Among the typical winter waterfowl, we found a single male Northern Pintail, a lone American Wigeon, and a few Lesser Scaup with the Greater Scaup. We also counted at least 5 Horned Grebes - an unusually high number for mid-January. Highlights of the walk were a flyover Bald Eagle, a Yellow-rumped Warbler hanging out with House Sparrows, and a Merlin perched in a tree beside the parking lot at the end of the walk.
By the end of the walk, we had tallied 27 species. Here is the full list:
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