A hardy group of folks from the RIchmond Hill Naturalists met at the Kleinburg CoffeeTime on a relatively mild Saturday morning before heading over to Joan Love’s spread. Joan’s feeders as usual were attracting a nice variety of birds (Red- and White-breasted Nuthatches, Downy Woodpeckers, Goldfinches, Junco’s, House Finches, CHickadees, Cardinals, Bluejays), but nothing exotic. A walk down through the river valley produced nothing of note. Upon heading down the hill back towards the house, a raptor was spotted at the top of a bare tree. Initial guesses were of Kestrel, but upon more close looks that was rejected. At a distance, through binoculars, it looked somewhat like a sHarp-shinned Hawk, but the tail was not right. Finally we brought a scope out and we all got a good look, including the eyebrow and tail markings, which all pointed to Merlin. As we were finishing our last looks at this very cooperative bird, another raptor flew into a tree on the other side of the house. This was undoubtedly a SHarpie, and gave us all a great chance to do the comparison.

Heading off up Major MacKenzie from Joan’s place, a Northern SHrike on the phone line was seen by a number of people. Up on the flats a number of raptors could be seen, the first couple being Red-tailed Hawks. The next one to show up was kind enough to land in a tree not too far from the road, and was clearly a (light-morph) Rough-legged Hawk. It was nice enough to take flight when people had it in their binoc’s, showing the neat ‘elbow patches’. While trying to scope the various hawks, a few folks tracked down some Song Sparrows and Field Sparrows down a side road/driveway. Seeing that a very long freight train was blocking the southward portion of McGilvary and Huntington Roads, we opted to head North up Huntington, along which more Red-tails and another Rough Legged Hawk were seen, as well as a Coyote in a field seen by a few.

Stoppping at the Nashville Cemetary, the group began a scanning of the row of cedars at the back, which quickly yielded what turned out to be 5 Long-Eared Owls. One took off over the cemetary, being harassed by a noisy flock of Blue Jays, but giving us all great looks.

Given the hour, it was agreed to head South now, in hopes that the train had crept out of our way. It had indeed and, along with a few more sightings of Red-tails, we had great luck at some freshly manured areas on a field on the East side, where a large number of Horned Larks were busy working over the bugs. A good chance for great scope views.

After these successes, we headed off to the pub in the Longchamps restaurant, which had a cheery fire going to help revive frozen toes and fingers. A pleasant lunch with lively discussion of the neat birds seen brought a nice outing to an end.