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By Jeremy Hatt

Since 2015, birders in Essex County have kept a list of all the species found in our area during the month of February, a challenge we call the “Depths of Winter”. It was originally started to encourage local birders to get out during the coldest month of the year and to have a friendly competition amongst ourselves. 2026 proved to be one of our coldest winters in recent memory so any encouragement to get outside was welcome! Thankfully by the end of February, signs of spring had started with the arrival of dabbling ducks, Killdeer, American Robins, and lots of blackbirds.

The Depths of Winter list is primarily tallied from eBird data but reports during the period can also be posted to the Ontario Bird Alert Discord server or sent to the coordinator, Jeremy Hatt.

The total number of species tallied this year was 110, which is among the lowest number of species seen during all the years of the challenge. This is not surprising given how cold February was this year and with all inland waters and much of Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie frozen for a good portion of the month.

This year there were no new species additions to the overall Depths of Winter List.

There were some still some exciting highlights, however. On February 28, I spotted a buzzer-beater male Harlequin Duck via spotting scope off the east side of the Tip of Point Pelee. This was on a day where several new migrants arrived including American Wigeon, Northern Pintail, Green-winged Teal, Northern Shoveler, Redhead, and Canvasback.

Other highlights included a hardy Black-crowned Night-Heron overwintering at the warm water outlet of the Little River Pollution Control Plant along with a Double-crested Cormorant, Long-tailed Ducks along the Detroit River and at Point Pelee, a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker photographed at Ojibway Park, and four Common Raven reports from the Harrow/Kingsville area.

Another highlight, at least for me and ECFNC President, Kory Renaud, was achieving the Essex County “owl sweep”; seeing all six regularly-occurring owls within Essex County in a single day. On February 7, Kory and I did our annual Big Day to see as many species as possible in a single day during the winter. Starting before dawn and ending after dusk, we managed to see or hear Great Horned Owl, Long-eared Owl, Short-eared Owl, Snowy Owl, Northern Saw-Whet Owl, and Eastern Screech-Owl. This isn’t the first time this challenge has been achieved but there are very few who have managed it!

There were also a few major hybrid highlights in February, even if they don’t count towards the overall species tally. These included a Tufted Duck x scaup sp. found by me, Cameron Chevalier, and Olivia Galloway on the Detroit River from Rivervilla Park in LaSalle (second record for Essex County). A Redhead x Lesser Scaup hybrid was found by me in the same location and date (second record for Essex County). A Canvasback x Redhead hybrid was also found at Lakeview Park Marina by Cameron Chevalier (second record for Essex County). A Snow x Ross’s Goose hybrid found by Jeremy Bensette and Kate Derbyshire in the Hillman Marsh area was another great hybrid (fifth record for Essex County).

Notable misses this year included Snow Goose, Ross’s Goose, Greater White-fronted Goose, Glaucous Gull, Bonaparte’s Gull, Pied-billed Grebe, Red-headed Woodpecker, Eastern Phoebe, Brown Thrasher, Marsh Wren, Chipping Sparrow, Field Sparrow, Savannah Sparrow, and Eastern Meadowlark.

Since its inception in 2015, the Depths of Winter List stands at a total of 150 species. Historically, according to eBird, there have been 167 species recorded in Essex County in February.

By: Jeremy Hatt

16 participants attended the Detroit River outing on January 10^th, an annual event co-hosted by the Ontario Field Ornithologists (OFO) and the Essex County Field Naturalists’ Club. Kory Renaud and I led walk again this year. We had a great day with 50 species observed across 7 eBird hotspots in Windsor and Tecumseh. Temperatures stayed around 2C for the day with low winds, making it a comfortable outing. The sky remained cloudy throughout the day and ended with a mix of rain, sleet, and snow in the final hour! Our full trip report is available on eBird here: https://ebird.org/tripreport/462318.

ECFNC and OFO members birding at Little River Corridor Park – photos by Diane Naluzny

During this outing, we always hope for colder temperatures to freeze up Lake St. Clair and concentrate birds on the Detroit River but a week of mild temperatures melted all the ice on the river and lake leading up to the hike. Waterfowl numbers weren’t as high as usual but two major highlights from the day made up for it: Long-eared Owl and Northern Saw-Whet Owl, which were lifers for several attendees. 

We started the outing at Lakeview Park Marina. Highlights included a Trumpeter Swan near Peche Island, a decent-sized raft of Canvasback and Redhead, and a flyby Lesser Black-backed Gull. We then headed over to the Little River Pollution Control Plant and Park where we picked up a pair of American Wigeon and an American Kestrel. It’s always a fun time to walk along the Little River Pollution Control Plant to see what species are attempting to overwinter here, even if the walk is unfortunately odious.

After lunch we stopped at two spots along the upper Detroit River for closer views of several waterfowl species and a resident Peregrine Falcon perched next to the “A” of the Ambassador Bridge. The drive along the Riverfront is always a nice addition to the outing to see the beauty of the river and the Detroit skyline.

We finished the day with a walk through Ojibway Park where we had great looks at many Tufted Titmice, Brown Creeper, two Fox Sparrows, two Eastern Towhees, and good numbers of White-throated Sparrows, American Tree Sparrows, and Dark-eyed Juncos. Many of our members are aware of the familiar seed-piles that turn up each winter on the trails in Ojibway that attract many of the winter specialties in for close looks.

We look forward to leading this annual hike for ECFNC and OFO again next year! Thanks to everyone who attended and helped spot and count birds.

By Jeremy Bensette

Thanks again to everyone who participated in the Lakeshore Christmas Bird Count on January 3, 2026.

We had a great birding day with relatively comfortable winter conditions, safe roads, and some nice socializing with some participants attending the group breakfast and/or late afternoon dinner. While we did not experience last year’s strong wind, or rain/snow, the cold temperature and ice on Lake St Clair presented a bit of a birding challenge. Despite these winter conditions, we had another very successful count! See below for some highlight finds, and a complete list of birds found. 

We counted a total of 71 species (plus one additional count week sp.) and 13130 individual birds this year. This year’s species count appears to be the third highest ever (74 remains the highest from two separate previous counts: 2025-01-04 and 2009-12-14), and it is significantly higher than the 22-year average count of approx 60 species since this CBC was first recorded in year 2000. The great participation by 18 birders was surely a major factor in this year’s success.

One particularly exciting highlight was new for the all-time Lakeshore CBC list: 

Two Black-crowned Night Herons were found in Area 1. This is typically only a warm season resident in the area, and relatively scarce at that. A great find for the first time in this Christmas Bird Count! 

Other notable finds include: 

• Snow Goose (3rd ever for count) 
  • American Wigeon (4th) 
  • Green-winged Teal (6th) 
  • Short-eared Owl (2nd)
  • Merlin (5th) 
  • Peregrine (5th) 
  • Tufted Titmouse (5th)
  • Ruby-crowned Kinglet (3rd)
  • Eastern Bluebird (2nd) 
  • Fox Sparrow (4th)

There were quite a few species with highest ever counts for this CBC. New highest counts include: 

• Canada Goose (5506, prev high 5500)
  • Hooded Merganser (92, prev high 83) 
  • Cooper’s Hawk (13, previous high 10) 
  • Northern Harrier (9, prev high 4) 
  • Bald Eagle (36, prev high 23) 
  • Great Horned Owl (5, prev high 2)  
  • Red-bellied Woodpecker (19, prev high 17)
  • Downy Woodpecker (73, prev high 70) 
  • Northern Flicker (9, prev high 6) 
  • Merlin (3, prev high 2) 
  • Blue Jay (156, prev high 130)
  • Red-breasted Nuthatch (15, prev high 10)  
  • Hermit Thrush (3, prev high 2)

Perhaps the most surprising miss of this year’s count was Lesser Scaup, which has been found on 16 of the previous 21 Lakeshore CBCs. 

Thank you all for working together on a superb Lakeshore CBC! I look forward to another great count next year. If anyone would like to volunteer a space within the count circle to have an end-of-day compilation for next year’s count, we would be most appreciative. There is much time between now and then to figure this out.