The ABA’s “Total Ticks” reporting category
includes one’s lists both in the US states (except Hawaii) as well as in the
Canadian provinces. Despite this broad
geography, the vast majority of my efforts to work on my Total Ticks have been
in the US. Similarly, my life-long goal
has been to get to the ABA reportable thresholds for all the US states, though
not for the Canadian provinces. As a
result, although my Total Ticks are 13,284, the Canadian portion of that total (called
All Territories and Provinces by the ABA) is only 415.
But over the last couple years as my
statelists have improved, the opportunity to increase my Total Ticks significantly
by birding just in the US has diminished.
So recently I’ve done just a bit of birding in Canada. For instance last year while birding in North
Dakota I added brief 1-hour forays for my first visits ever to Manitoba and
Saskatchewan adding 88 Total Ticks – not a lot but a start. And last summer while birding in northern NH
and ME, I added a morning in Quebec, picking up 63 birds during my first ever
birding time in that province. But my
415 ticks in Canada already includes those totals. And since my only semi-respectable province
total is Ontario at 181, I have lots of potential to add ticks in most any
Canadian province.
As the summer of 2015 progressed I lamented
not having taken what has turned out to be a nearly annual spring/summer
statebirding trip this year. So I
started thinking about taking a short trip into a nearby province to add some
relatively easy ticks in Canada. Quebec
is the closest province – a little less than 4 hours away along the northern VT
border. And with just 63 ticks on my
province list, there was considerable potential to greatly increase that
total. I picked a 3-day vacation period in
early September as a likely time to be able to focus on migrant passerines and
shorebirds. And since I wouldn’t likely
get to Quebec too easily in winter, waterfowl would be a good focus as
well. So I started doing some research
on-line to find the best birding hotspots not too far from the VT border. Although many of the resources were in french,
I was still able to use my very rusty high school French and an on-line
translator to come up with a game plan.
And with the help of recent eBird data, I hoped for about 50 new birds
for my province list.
Day 1
I left my hotel in Rutland, VT (after
adding Yellow-crowned Night-Heron to my VT list the night before) in the early
morning, and was at the QC/VT line by 9:30 AM.
By 10 I was at the Centre D'interprétation de la Nature du Lac-Boivin. This eBird hotspot had considerable
woodlands, marsh, and a lake, with quite a number of species reported there
recently. I spent 4 ½ hours there on
foot, starting and ending with walks on woodland trails, with a couple stops at
the lake and marsh. It turned out to be
a very birdy spot, getting 55 species, including 13 species of Warblers and 3
species of Vireos even though I couldn’t be there at dawn. No real rarities, but lots of diversity. Perhaps the highlight was the extremely tame
Chickadees which were undoubtedly very used to being fed by hand along the
trails – this Chickadee landed on my hand even though I had no seed with me.
With stops around the wetlands I added 6
species of waterfowl, Osprey, and cormorant.
When I left at 2:30 I was already nearly half way to my goal of 50 new
province birds.
The next stop was nearby Parc National de
la Yamaska. A brief visit at the
reservoir yielded a large flock of Ring-billed Gulls (but no other gull
species), and 3 extremely distant Redheads, but little else. It was here that I ran into two very helpful
birding couples who told me about a second location at the park, the alternate
spillway for the reservoir, where they had shorebirds earlier in the day. We all walked back to that spot and added 6
species of shorebirds though in very low numbers, along with 3 additional
Warbler species I had not seen earlier.
In route to my hotel in Drummondville I
picked up a couple more new birds – Kestrel and Nighthawk – before calling it a
day. I ended up with 75 species for the
day including 33 new birds for my QC list – a very nice start to the trip
The birders I met at Yamaska also told me
about a spot not too far away where a couple rare shorebirds had been seen
recently – Stilt Sandpiper and Long-billed Dowitcher. It took a little time to figure out the
location, but it turned out to be Domaine-de-la-Pêche-au-Saumon in Sainte-Martine southwest of
Montreal. That evening I went on eBird
and saw that quite a number of possible new province birds were being seen
there, so I decided to add it to my itinerary for the next day.
Day 2
I started at dawn in woodlands north of
Drummondville along Riviere Saint-Francois, hoping for some early morning
migrants. But the woodlands were rather
inaccessible and I only spent a few minutes there. Despite the short trip I did pick up Cardinal
at a suburban feeder, a singing Pine Warbler, and Gadwall in the river.
The next several stops were at or near the
Saint Lawrence River, with several shorebird, waterfowl, and gull
opportunities. The first stop was at the
Station D'épuration (sewage treatment ponds) at Baie-du-Febvre where lots of
waterfowl had been reported recently on eBird.
The site did not disappoint, with 8 species of waterfowl including a
nice group of lingering Snow Geese, Common Gallinule, Harrier, and Marsh Wren
giving me 8 new province birds. At the
neighboring Etangs de la Defence I added Black-crowned Night-Heron, Merlin,
Cooper’s Hawk, Semi Plover, and Pectoral Sandpiper for 5 more. Unfortunately the shorebirds were seen flying
into a spot in the marsh which was not visible – who knows what other
shorebirds may have been in there.
The next stop was the little town of Commune
de la Baie-du-Febvre on the river principally for landbird migrants. Although I had almost no passerines here, I
did pick up a lone Pintail and Herring Gull – the 50th and 51st
new birds for my QC list. I already
exceeded my target and I still had more than a full day of QC birding ahead of
me.
Next I was onto Parc Ecologique de l'Anse
du Port, featuring an elevated boardwalk first though a swampy forest, then a
marsh, ending at the Saint Lawrence.
Just about the only birds in the woodlands were several singing Pewees,
though I played tape unsuccessfully for Barred Owl. The marsh yielded a distant Virginia Rail
that replied to tape. The end of the
boardwalk provided a great spot to scan the river and Lac-Saint-Pierre. Here I picked out a lone late Common Tern,
and several Great Black-backed Gulls (outnumbering the Ring-bills). Four new province birds were nice for this
midday stop.
The last stop along the River was at Quai
Port-St-François, a pier that sticks out onto the lake. I hoped for some shorebirds along the sandy
beach but only found a Spotted Sand. I
then scanned the water in the distance but didn’t see a single bird. But then I noticed a dark immature gull
floating nearby picking at a dead fish on the surface. Long wings, checkered back, all dark bill – a
first-year Lesser Black-backed. I got
these phonescoped photos as the bird floated by.
It was now early afternoon as I headed
toward Sainte-Martine for a stop at Domaine-de-la-Pêche-au-Saumon. I started to realize that not only had I
already exceeded my goal of 50 new province birds, but I was starting to run
out of possibilities. Sure I was only at
119 for the province so there were many more possibilities, but they would be
few and far between now. Plus many of
the next set of targets at a planned stop at the Phillipsburg Sanctuary the
morning of Day 3 were nesting birds that barely get into QC. I wondered how many might still be around,
and thought that maybe the better approach would be to come back to southern QC
in May or June to try for them while they were nesting. If I made the next shorebird stop at Sainte-Martine
as my last stop of the trip, I could head back home one day early. But how many new birds would I miss? I had just decided to call it quits after Sainte-Martine
when a Turkey Vulture flew by - #120. I
wasn’t sure if I should look at that as confirmation that I should leave QC
early because there was one less bird to try for the next day, or that it was
an omen that I should keep birding to try to pick off additional birds even if
they would be one at a time.
From photos I saw on-line, Domaine-de-la-Pêche-au-Saumon
was a river downstream of a low dam, with a number of exposed rocks and shallow
puddles. It looked like a really nice
spot, but I wondered how I might gain access to the areas where the shorebirds
had been spotted. But just after I
arrived at 3 PM I noticed 3 birders on the rocks below, so I made my way down
to their location. Within seconds I
added Great Egret and American Wigeon to my list. And no more than a minute later I had the
Long-billed Dowitcher practically at my feet, and the Stilt Sandpiper.
A few minutes later I found a second Stilt
Sandpiper – not bad for a rare species in the province. Although I only saw 14 species at this stop 4
were new for my list. It was a great way
to end the trip, and given my focus on shorebirds, adding a couple rarer
species was great. Many thanks to those
birders who told me about this spot. I had 71 species on Day 2, dominated by waterfowl and shorebirds.
I ended up with 61 new birds for my
province list, giving me 124 total for QC.
I had 109 species for the trip, including 14 waterfowl species, 11
shorebird species and 19 warbler species in a bit under 2 days of birding. Some very respectable totals.
Looking to the future, my greatest
potential for additional birds in the southern part of the province would be in
the early winter before freeze up for diving ducks, raptors, field birds, and
winter finches; and in late spring/early summer for nesting woodland
birds. With two short trips over the
next year maybe I could get close to 200 in Quebec.
And now a postscript - By coming home a day early I was able to take
a ferry out of New London, CT the next day where I added Pomarine Jaeger to
both my CT and NY lists (detailed in my earlier blog post). Along with the Night-Heron on VT, that gave
me 64 state/province birds in 3 states and 1 province in 4 consecutive
days. Nice results for a 3-day
vacation.
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