It was a stellar day for our bird outing at Mack Laing Park. The weather was sunny and pleasantly warm...and the first bird sighted was a Barred Owl!
We had descended by staircase from Balmoral Ave down to the Brooklyn Creek trail and after a moment of walking, the Owl was pointed out to us in the near distance. Bingo! We had a good look at it and then proceeded down the trail. As we had rather expected at this time of year, it was a struggle to locate most of the birds we heard calling throughout the woods, but we still came up with a nice number of sightings – including a second Barred Owl that we found in a tree right by the trail just as we were leaving the park. What a high to cap off our morning!
Before leaving the area, we climbed up to MacDonald Wood Park from Mack Laing and made our way to a point below a Great Blue Heron nest that had been sighted high in a tree. Since it was so high and mostly obscured by branches and greenery, we didn’t get good views but we did indeed glimpse at least two young heron.
In all, we noted 24 species: the Barred Owl, Bald Eagle, Great Blue Heron, Spotted Towhee, American Robin, Purple Martin, Violet-green Swallow, Barn Swallow, Anna’s Hummingbird, Chestnut-backed Chickadee, Song Sparrow, White-crowned Sparrow, Chipping Sparrow, House Finch, Red-breasted Nuthatch, Western Flycatcher, Western Tanager, Warbling Vireo, American Goldfinch, Northern Yellow Warbler and gull spp. were all sighted while the calls/songs of Hutton’s Vireo, Orange-crowned Warbler and Swainson’s Thrush were heard.
Photos were by Dawn M.:
1 Barred Owl 2 Barred Owl
3 group on a bridge 4 Chestnut-backed Chickadee
5 Western Flycatcher 6 group above the shoreline
7 Chipping Sparrow juvenile and adult 8 group above the tideline
9 House Finch male 10 White-crowned Sparrow juvenile
