Ottawa Area Birding: Birding Report - Dewberry Trail, Mer Blue, roads off Russell Road, Samure & Indian Creek with JC Birding

Tuesday, March 1, 2022

Birding Report - Dewberry Trail, Mer Blue, roads off Russell Road, Samure & Indian Creek with JC Birding

March 1, 2022

Birding Report by Jane Burgess

Bad me, I ended up being 10 minutes late, just too darn many red lights going down Walkley Road. When I arrived, Bill & Barbara and Barb C ( so good to see her after her 7 week road trip) were catching up. We huddled for a while, me telling them what the plan was and asking what we wanted to see first.

Pulling out of the parking lot at Elmvale Acres, we saw a flock of Rock Pigeons, I think the only ones of the day. Then on Ramsayville Road we had our first Common Raven, we had lots of Ravens during the day.

We headed to Dewberry Trail. Purple finch males were the first I saw, then some females came along. There is a feeding station where you start the trail (I did not know this) and it was busy with many Hairy and Downy Woodpeckers flying to and fro along with Common Redpoll, Black-capped Chickadees, Dark-eyed Junco, Northern Cardinal, Blue Jay and American Tree Sparrow.

At the Mer Bleue feeder, the only new species were White-breasted Nuthatch and Mourning Dove. There were many American Tree Sparrows mmm are the grouping up to leave us?

We drove down Farmers Way and Hall Road, nothing new. I thought I saw a potential Northern Shrike, the bird was on the top of a tree, robin sized with a white belly. I called Bill to ask if he had seen it, no, but thought it worthwhile to turn around and try to find it again. We turned around, but unfortunately the bird had disappeared. We checked out a feeder on Samure and added American Goldfinch. There is a house on Indian Creek that is always good, but not today.

Time for lunch, we drove to the new welcome centre in Larose Forest, new since fall of 2020. It is a place to get warm in the winter and to get away from the bugs in the warmer months. As well one can rent snowshoes and bikes. There are tables if you wish to eat indoors. We chose to eat our lunch in the car because there was a school group coming and we did not want to get mixed up in the potential bedlam . As we watched from our cars, the rental of bikes went smoothly and the kids were off having lots of fun. Bill and Barbara left us at this point. It had been snowing all morning and the birding was very slow.