Coniferous, Woodland & Trails - Ottawa West with Tony Beck

Thursday November 17, 7:30am

Today there were myself, both Ricks, Paul, Nina, Tony and Al.  We met at the the coliseum parking lot and headed west, stopping briefly at the corner of Rifle Road to scope a light-morph Rough-legged Hawk.

We went to Kerwin Road via Berry and Fifth Line, at the corner of which, we stopped to see a couple of Eastern Bluebirds and a Hairy Woodpecker.

We went a fair piece down Kerwin trail, but it was decidedly quiet.  We all got excited when Nina spotted a Red-breasted Nuthatch.  A couple of Golden-crowned Kinglets were also spotted.  Back at the cars, we saw a Northern Shrike take off like a gunshot, but it just kept going.

We went to Tim Horton's to get re-energized, then went south to Eagleson & Akin's Rds.  There we saw another Rough-legged Hawk, rather distant.  We cruised Akin's and Brownlee, but saw nothing else.  So we headed to the Richmond Lagoons.

The first cell was down, with lots of shorebird habitat, but no shorebirds.  The second cell was loaded with Canada Geese.  A lot of scope work revealed a Cackling Goose among them and two Brant at the back on the shore.  Tony speculated that these were the same two from Andrew Haydon Park.  We also saw a Green-winged Teal and some American Black Ducks.

We moved on to Burnside Pond, where we saw quite a number of Greater Snow Geese, which soon moved on.  There were lots of Hooded Mergansers, a Great Black-backed Gull and a Lesser Black-backed Gull.  We also saw a Ring-necked Duck and many Common Mergansers at the back.

We drove around to the dump, where we looked at many Herring Gulls and Ring-billed Gulls and a single Iceland Gull - a first-year bird.

Still no Red-tails, so we went back by Cedarview Road, where Tony got one for us.