It's not very often that you can leave the winter clothing at home while birding the Niagara River at Christmas, but that is exactly what happened this past week while I was down near Fort Erie with family as the temperature soared to near 10 degrees. I managed to get a bit of time to go birding along the river, and although I didn't find anything out of the ordinary, I did have some interesting observations including an adult Little Gull at Waverly Beach on Christmas day!
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| American Black Ducks |
I checked all the usual spots including Adam Beck and had numerous Iceland Gulls as well as a bird that I thought looked to be a good candidate for a Thayer's Gull. Edit**After looking at the photos the bird in this picture may be just a lightly marked Herring Gull, I'm not sure if this was in fact the bird I was looking at or not. Any ideas?
Out on the river I also spotted this Common Loon just hanging out,
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| Common Loon |
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| Red-breasted Mergansers |
On Christmas eve a big wind storm blew into the Niagara region with gusts of near 90km/h. On Christmas day I checked Waverly Beach and watched the birds struggle with the strong wind. After watching for a half hour I was rewarded with a Little Gull!
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| A Bufflehead struggles against the wind at Waverly Beach |
Merry Christmas!
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