chart

By Jeremy Hatt

The Essex County Field Naturalists’ Club (ECFNC) stepped into the role of Caretaker for the Lower Detroit River Key Biodiversity Area (KBA) in 2015 and started conducting waterfowl counts in the area in 2016. Originally named Important Bird Areas, Birds Canada updated the title to Key Biodiversity Areas to better reflect their ecosystems as a whole. There are Key Biodiversity Areas found across North America including six within Essex County. The Lower Detroit River KBA extends from the Detroit River mouth in Amherstburg to the north end of Fighting Island in LaSalle.

The Lower Detroit River KBA is labeled a Key Biodiversity Area for the high numbers of waterfowl that stage here during the winter months. In particular, Canvasbacks can be found in the tens of thousands and the region supports at least >7% of the global population of the species in the winter, but possibly more. Highest concentrations of Canvasback occur in Essex County where the mouths of the Detroit River meet Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair during the coldest months when both lakes are partially to mostly frozen. In mild parts of the winter when waters are open, large numbers of Canvasback can also be seen on the Detroit River north of Boblo Island and Crystal Island, as well as further east in Lake St. Clair.

In 2018, ECFNC reached out to the Detroit Audubon Society to see if they had volunteers who would be willing to count waterfowl from the Michigan side of the Detroit River, particularly in areas where they are not visible from the Ontario side. Detroit Audubon Society was on board and since then have partnered with ECFNC in a bi-national waterfowl count (with the exception of 2021 due to Covid-19 lockdowns). The bi-national counts have been successful enough that efforts are now underway to extend the KBA to include the Michigan side of the Lower Detroit River as well as the Detroit River mouth at Lake St. Clair.

Waterfowl counts in 2022 were held on January 15^th, January 29^th, and February 12^th. That year proved why the count being bi-national is so important since most of the Canvasback tallied were spotted from the Michigan side in areas not visible from Amherstburg or LaSalle (primarily counted from lookouts on Gross Isle). 15,170 Canvasback were counted on January 15^th, 21,607 on January 29^th, and 14,149 on February 12^th. These were the highest count totals since ECFNC started the counts in 2016.

Waterfowl counts in 2023 were held on January 14^th (Michigan side only), January 28^th, and February 11^th. No Canvasbacks were counted on the January 14^th count but 3,125 were counted on January 28^th and 2,502 on February 11^th. Numbers of other species like Common Merganser were also relatively low compared to other years but a count of 2,500 Redhead near Cooper’s Marina on February 11^th was a good number for the species.  

Although the counts for 2023 did not yield high numbers of Canvasbacks, there were still significant counts within Essex County during the winter period. The most impressive was about 40,000 Canvasback on January 8, 2023, carefully estimated by Michael and Steve McAllister from Brighton Beach Park, a small parkette in Tecumseh that looks out onto Lake St. Clair. This massive raft of Canvasback stayed until at least February 5^th when 15,000 birds were still estimated to be present. The only higher counts for our region are a staggering 50,000 birds estimated on January 3^rd, 2014, by Karl Overman and James Fox from Lake Erie Metropark, and 49,631 birds on December 28, 2016; meticulously counted by Jerome Jourdan from a video of a massive raft that took flight near Pointe Mouillee State Game Area in Michigan.

The large congregations of wintering Canvasbacks on the Detroit River and Lake St. Clair are a spectacle birders should try to experience in Essex County. There is nothing like seeing a massive raft of this beautiful duck take flight, or watching large flocks in loose “V” formations by the thousands as they fly between Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie.

By Don Bissonnette

  In 2022, The Eastern Bluebirds in Essex County had a good year. I collected statistics from 24 trails, which had a total of 167 birdhouses. We counted a total of 24 successful pairs of Bluebirds, which produced a total of 119 fledglings. 

   This is a significant increase, compared to the previous years numbers. In 2021, we only counted 16 successful pairs of Bluebirds, which produced only 69 fledgling Bluebirds.

INSPECTION  TIME . . . Any time in February or early March is a good time to inspect, repair, repaint or re-locate your birdhouses. If any of the Pine Straw beds are dirty or wet, replace them with new ones.  Also, please remember to inspect your predator guards. It is best to have your birdhouses ready, sooner than later.  In the past few years, some of our earliest Tree Swallows arrived in our County between March 10^th and the 17th.  Also, some pairs of Bluebirds start building their nests in mid-March.

VAN  ERT  LIVE  TRAPS . . . Once again, I am selling Van Ert live traps at cost. [$18.50 + $2.41(H.S.T.) = Total $20.91] Cash only.  Please contact me, if you need to buy one. {Don Bissonnette … (519) 738-3279.}

The Ontario  Eastern  Bluebird  Society​ has scheduled their Annual  General  Meeting​ on Saturday, March 18th. This is their first face-to-face A.G.M. since 2019.  This meeting will be held at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington, Ontario. Registration starts at 8:30 am. The meeting starts at 9:00 am. For more details, visit the OEBS web-site.     Thanks to every-one who sent me their 2022 Bluebird and Tree Swallow nesting statistics.

Best Wishes for the 2023 Nesting Season!     

By Cameron Chevalier

2022 was my second year of participating in the Holiday Beach Christmas Bird Count, and this time I birded with Mike and Steve McAllister (our friend Harrison Priebe was unfortunately prevented from joining us by the major storm that hit around that time). Having had a pretty slow morning at other hotspots in our count area, we entered Memorial Forest from County Road 50. Harrison had introduced me to this hotspot over two years prior, and it has yielded us many great birds since then (Northern Goshawk, Hudsonian Godwit, Dickcissel, and Acadian Flycatcher to name a few). Mike went off to search a few trees for owls, and just as he returned I remarked that at Memorial we would at least add a chickadee to our list. Moments later, a calling chickadee flew across the path and landed five meters ahead of us just off trail, at head height. Mike responded to my comment by pointing out the bird, and we all easily dismissed it as a familiar Black-capped Chickadee until I decided to use my binoculars. I was shocked to see a clear Boreal Chickadee, with its brown cap, dark gray-brown back and nape, and bright rusty flanks, and called it out frantically. I had studied the species wanting to add it to my life list for a while, so my identification was immediate. With the suggestion of southward movement earlier in the fall, Boreal Chickadee had been on the radar of Essex birders in 2022, but by the end of the year it seemed hopeless. Mike and Steve assumed I was kidding until they looked as well and we collectively freaked out! I was so excited that I didn’t take any photos and instead focused on sharing our find, hoping to get as many people out as possible for this incredible record. Over the next several weeks, many other birders arrived and got great looks and photos, and the bird became somewhat of a local celebrity. It persists at the same location at the time of writing.

While a relative outlier in recent years both regionally and for Southwestern Ontario as a whole, this is not the first Boreal Chickadee record for Essex. There are approximately 12 previous records, with the most recent coming 17 years ago during Alan Wormington’s record-breaking Point Pelee Birding Area Big Year in 2005 (though a possible record from Holiday Beach during the irruption year in 2010 exists). Surprisingly, the present record constitutes the first time the species was recorded in Essex in the month of December, and the species has now been recorded in the county in seven different months (November to May)!

For me, finding this bird with Mike and Steve during the Holiday Beach Christmas Bird Count goes to show what CBCs and birding throughout the year (even in the winter months) are all about: simply getting out to see what species may be around. In my experience there is always something interesting, and in this case, the Boreal Chickadee served as an excellent final addition to a remarkable year of birding in Essex in 2022.