The Egret Article

By Karen Alexander

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Thank you to all Club members who have renewed their membership for 2022! We are grateful for your continued loyalty, commitment, and support, especially while our normal club activities have been postponed or offered only virtually.  Membership renewals are due April 1, 2022.

This year we have many exciting plans for the Club:

• We intend to get back to in-person Speaker Series at the Ojibway Nature Centre as soon as we are able to. Meanwhile, our Speaker Series will continue online.
• We will keep hosting “Pop-up” events throughout the County – thank you to all who join these events, it is lovely to see members coming together again! The last event at Jack Miners on March 6 brought together 17 members for about 3 hours. Members enjoyed a lovely day with observations of 13 bird species! Hello Spring!
• Our Junior Egrets Club is getting 20 backpacks stuffed with nature guides, activities, and a schedule of events!  Thanks to the TD Friends of the Environment, we are able to offer a new program called “Connecting Youth to Local Nature”.  Stay tuned for more information or contact Kory Renaud, Chair of the Junior Egrets Committee.
• We have a number of new volunteer opportunities and we recently completed a new Organizational Chart (see photo below)  that provides a visual breakdown of all the volunteer roles and Committees we have – we really do quite a lot for a volunteer Club and I am proud of our Membership.
• We are currently seeking current or new members to fill a few roles:
  • Speaker Series Coordinator
  • Communications Coordinator
  • Volunteer Manager
  • iNaturalist Coordinator
  • Members for the Heritage Committee, the Phragmites Committee, and the Junior Egrets Committee

The Essex County Field Naturalists’ Club is a volunteer-driven Club that could not run without Members stepping into roles and stepping up to help us spread excitement and gratitude for local natural heritage.  If we don’t do this important work to provide the opportunity for people to become acquainted with and to better understand the natural environment in Essex County, who will?

I very much look forward to meeting more of our Membership this year and can’t wait to get back to in-person meetings, events, and projects!

Sincerely,

Karen Alexander, President

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By Jeremy Hatt

The 16th annual Holiday Beach CBC took place on Tuesday, December 28^th, 2021. The count area includes Holiday Beach Conservation Area, Big Creek, the lower Detroit River north to LaSalle (Lower Detroit IBA), Boblo Island, and surrounding areas. Unfortunately, Boblo Island was inaccessible this year due to construction on the island but the rest of the count circle received good coverage. 37 participants volunteered for the Count, tallying 78 species and 21,533 individual birds. During the count there were many new volunteers taking part, including several ECFNC members, which was great to see. Golden Eagle was the only additional species reported for Count Week. The species count of 78 is two below the record high of 80 species.

Skies were cloudy all day and heavy wet snow started in the mid-afternoon and into the evening. The temperature ranged from a low of 0C and a high of 2C w/ light southeast winds making for comfortable birding throughout the day. There was no ice cover on any bodies of water during the count.

A few highlights from this year’s count included:

Snow Goose – 4
Cackling Goose – 1
Northern Pintail – 7 (good number for the count)
Green-winged Teal – 1 (new species for the count)
Canvasback – 11,326 (record high count – mostly consisting of birds streaming from the Lower Detroit River IBA towards Lake Erie and a spectacle for Area 5 volunteers to witness!)
Ruddy Duck – 1
Ring-necked Pheasant – 1 (becoming increasingly difficult to find on CBC’s in Essex County)
Great Blue Heron – 30 (good number for the count)
Hairy Woodpecker – 19 (record high count)
Blue Jay – 227 (record high count)
Tufted Titmouse – 16 (record high count)
Marsh Wren – 2 (record high count)

Many thanks to all the Area Leaders and volunteers for their efforts and thanks to Kory Renaud for helping coordinate the Count!

By Paul Pratt

Here are the results from the Canadian portion of the 2022 Detroit River Christmas Bird Count. About one quarter of this Michigan count  is on the Canadian side of the Detroit River between the foot of Lauzon Road to the north end of Fighting Island. Highlights of the 60 species seen this year included the first ever Common Raven for the count spotted by Ian Woodfield and Carl Maiolani, 2 Belted Kingfishers, 18 Tufted Titmice, 55 Robins, Gray Catbird, Fox Sparrow and Common Redpoll. 

Canada Goose              353
Mute Swan                                33
Mallard                                     233
Canvasback                              170
Redhead                                    735
Ring-necked Duck                     28
Greater Scaup                           8
Bufflehead                                112
Common Goldeneye      31
Hooded Merganser                    11
Common Merganser      17
Red-breasted Merganser 20
Ruddy Duck                           3
Ring-necked Pheasant   1
Wild Turkey                                17
Great Blue Heron                        2
Bald Eagle                                 1
Cooper’s Hawk              4
Red-tailed Hawk                         8
Great Horned Owl                      1
Eastern Screech-Owl     1
Bonaparte’s Gull                       16
Ring-billed Gull               161
Herring Gull                               6
Rock Pigeon                             836
Mourning Dove              71
Belted Kingfisher                       2
Red-bellied Woodpecker 13
Downy Woodpecker      51
Hairy Woodpecker                      4
Northern Flicker                         2
American Kestrel                       1
Peregrine Falcon                       1
Blue Jay                                   124
American Crow               13
Common Raven             1
Black-capped Chickadee 52
Tufted Titmouse                        18
Golden-crowned Kinglet 1
Red-breasted Nuthatch  8
White-breasted Nuthatch 52
Brown Creeper              3
Winter Wren                               1
Carolina Wren                            15
Eastern Bluebird                         1
American Robin             55
European Starling                    178
Gray Catbird                              1
Northern Mockingbird    count week
American Tree Sparrow  17
Fox Sparrow                              1
Song Sparrow                           7
White-throated Sparrow 15
White-crowned Sparrow 2
Dark-eyed Junco                       209
Northern Cardinal                       47
House Finch                              42
Purple Finch                              1
Common Redpoll                      1
American Goldfinch                   48
House Sparrow             326

# Field Participants        26 in 9 parties
# feeder watchers          3
# party hours                 31.5 

(18.75 by car, 12.75 walking)
# mi walking                  16.5
# mi driving                   195


Participants: 

Giovanni Abati

Dominic Carlone
Karen Cedar

Leia Cedar

Griff Evans

Larry Evon 

Wren Evon 

Hazel Evon 

Violet Evon 

Kristen Fawdry 

Catherine Febria

Jan Graybiel
Shirley Grondin 

Heidi Jacobs

Theresa LaMire

Carl Maiolani 

Jennifer Nantais

Emilia Oabel

Larry Onysko

Larry Phillips
Paul Pratt
Kory Renaud

Gordon Richardson

Bonnie Ross

Howard Williams

Ian Woodfield