The Pipits: March 4-6 2022, Algonquin Park, report
8 Mar 2022 7:23 AM Colleen Reilly (Administrator)
Hello Pipits!
Attending: 14 Pipits!
What an AMAZING trip this past weekend! I get up to Algonquin every year for at least one winter trip, for sure always in February or March to celebrate my birthday. This year wasn't a typical quiet introspective trip... I had 13 Pipits with me, as well as my 13 year old son Maxwell. Boy was it FUN! We spent Saturday in the Park, and a number of Pipits joined me for a drink and a lovely wood fire afterwards at our cabin that evening. I'll always remember turning 55 with very special memories, thank you all so much for your generosity and wonderful buoyant company!
I'd like to send out a special thank you to the group of Pipits who put together a collection in honour of my birthday, and got me a personalized Pipits license plate for my car; along with a birdy charm for my bracelet and a print of an historic drawing of a Water Pipit! Along with a beautiful card! Thank you very much to Dave Archbell for orchestrating this feat, and Angelique Mori for assisting in this secret operation! I literally had NO IDEA and was absolutely floored when Dave presented this gift. Thank you also to Diane for my birthday cake - yum yum; and to Cindy for the wonderful and thoughtful gift. It will have a place in my office!
Before we began the outing on Saturday, we had our usual list of hoped for target birds - especially the winter Finches, Black Backed Woodpecker, Canada Jays, and Spruce Grouse. And as luck would have it - or should I say - our incredible skills and the luck of the Pipits - we saw everything we hoped for! Except for Goshawk, Great Grey and other owls LOL. I certainly cannot complain! Algonquin is always hit or miss, and we sure did hit on this trip. We saw all the Finches - White Winged and Red Crossbills, Evening and Pine Grosbeaks, Common and Hoary Redpolls, Pine Siskins... and I think that's it for Finches. We saw an incredible 4 Black Backed Woodpeckers, both males and females; 5 Canada Jays, and a male Spruce Grouse displaying for his girl.
Dave reached out to Dan Strickland (long time Algonquin Park Naturalist) to report the Canada Jays to the ongoing monitoring project. Our sightings are going into the research database! So not only did we contribute to Citizen Science through our eBird lists, but we also contributed to this active long term study! Speaking about eBird, Dave created a Pipits account for us, and I've added our eBird reports to this account, so this is officially becoming a thing. Many thanks to Angelique, Dave and Markus for sharing their eBird lists with me!
Here is the sheet Dan sent outlining the current Canada Jays being monitored. Between Dave and I we had photos of two males (r-YOYLWOSR 4, and ROLLPOSR 11+), one of which has a visible radio antennae attached! These two are 4 and 11+ years respectively. Dan indicated that the 11+ year old male is now a widow.
"ROLLPOSR is the now apparently widowed male from the Cliff territory (east side of Costello Creek, north of the bridge)
YOYLWOSR and WOSLROWR are the male and female of the Cameron Lake Road territory (where the logging road leaves the Opeongo Road)"
Here is a link to my Google Photo Album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/39s2Q16x4qhdSgt48
To see the subject identification, click on the photo, then the little "i", look at the details and find the file name. The photos of the Canada Jays include the coded band code names seen in the above chart from Dan Strickland.
Here is a link to our eBird Trip Report:
Thanks everyone for making this such a wonderful group - you truly are a very special and dear group of people. Great birding on this trip!
Colleen
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