Migration Time and the Colonel Sam Smith Park Rare Birds: Chat and LeConte’s

Once I returned home from Florida it was a waiting game for Spring Migration.  In Florida in March, I did see a few Warblers, including the ubiquitous Palm and Yellow-rumped, along with Common Yellow-throat and Black-and-white.  Back in Toronto, spring did not want to come out, with low temperatures and even a late April ice storm, with trees coming down all over the city.

I spend most of the migration season, while in Toronto, at Colonel Samuel Smith Park by Lake Ontario.  It is a great migrant trap and we have had some amazing birds show up over the years.  This year, it started with a fallout of American Woodcocks and a single Virginia Rail.  The rail was the second new bird for my park list,(#199).   The woodcock, I’ve seen a few times at Col. Sam and elsewhere, but never seen one for long enough to get even a blurry photo.  Thanks to a good handful of tired migrants, it was like shooting snapping photos of fish in an aquarium.  The rail also showed well:

But that was only the beginning.  Next was a White-crowned Sparrow; not rare for the park but a very early arrival, and a Snow Bunting, a very late sighting for the park, both of which came up on eBird as rare for the date:

Next up, a Pine Warbler and a Sora, numbers 200 and 201 for my park list and we were done yet, not by a long shot.

Along with the rare birds and park Lifers, there were Common Loons, a few Horned Grebes, and even an American Robin with a white wing, to make birding every day in the park more interesting.

But it was in the aftermath of the April 29 ice storm and after the wind storm of May 5, when things really heated up.  On Saturday we were treated to a rare for Toronto Yellow-breasted Chat in Col. Sam-which boosted my park total to 202-and to top it all off, a Prairie Warbler over at Ashbridges Bay.

The weekend finished on an even higher note, when a LeConte’s Sparrow showed up in Col. Sam, yet another new species for my park list, #202:

Other birds of note for the day were a Wood Thrush, Rusty Blackbird, Chestnut-sided Warbler and a Red-winged Blackbird on her nest.  Migration is just heating up, and who knows what else might show up before the end of May.  I will spend the next week birding in Toronto, then it is off to Rondeau Provincial Park for their Fantasy of Flight birding Festival.