Ottawa Area Birding: West Québec and the Eardley Escarpment with JC Birding

Monday February 6, 2023

Birding Report - Barb Chouinard

Bill and Barbara and Barbc met up at the Champlain Bridge parking lot at 8 am. It was a sunny but cool -8 degrees and -16 degrees with the wind. Barbc checked the Ottawa River and there was a sole Common Goldeneye diving in the water fairly close to shore. No buddies with him. The Ottawa River is wide open here and it appears to be "high" and the water fast. There are little ice lumps in the water also.

We traveled onto the 148 and while passing by the Breckenridge sign both Barbara and Barbc spotted a large bird in a tree off the highway. Once past the bird, we saw the snow white head: an adult Bald Eagle! Bill executed a u-turn here and we ended up taking a side road that we did not realize existed and viewed the bird until it flew away. One of first birds we had hoped to see and it wasn't even 9 am. Things were looking good. There were the usual crows flying around.

When we stopped to view the Bald Eagle, Barbara put her window down and it would not go back up. We tried the front controls for the window and the child locks and slammed and jiggled the door a bit. Nothing worked. It would be a pretty cood birding day with an open window all day. Bill tried, Barbc tried. Then we realized that there a tiny bead of ice that had fallen into the door control button... we moved it around and voila! The window went up. Whew! How many people does it take to raise a car passenger window today: three!

We turned on to the north side of Chemin Smith-Leonard. Here we usually see some kind of raptor. Nope, it was cold and early in the day. It seemed like every bird was still in its bolt hole somewhere safe. Barbara said she saw some large birds. On a sunny but cold day, the Wild Turkeys were still "sleeping in" on their night roost in the trees. There was about 6 of them. We went up a ways and saw a car and a tractor across the road. Not sure what the people were doing, so we turned around. We had a Hairy Woodpecker here.

Bill had wanted to check out a certain road, Chemin Pilon, that we don't usually go on. This road goes up toward the escarpment. The road was not plowed beyond a certain point, so we did not get close to the escarpment like we hoped.

We then went "up" Chemin Thérien to the escarpment. This is a beautiful road that leads to a good close-up view of the escarpment. Scopes were taken out, hollows in the hills were examined. Nothing except some crows.

We continued on the 148 to the Eardely-Masham Road. There are feeders at two houses just about 500 metres from the turn. At number 322 we had American Tree Sparrows on the bird feeders. This is kind of unusual as these birds are usually viewed on the ground. Not today. We went up the escarpment looking for raptors. We continued as far as Ramsay Lake and turned around. We constantly looked for movement going back down from the escarpment. Nope, nothing.

We went down the dead end of Bradley. Nope nothing here except someone snow blowing his lane. Oh oh, it was garbage day today and here came the garbage truck. Bill told his story about going into the ditch last winter thinking that there was road beneath as the snowplow had cleaned it. Nope it was all an illusion and when a vehicle came by, Bill made room and ended up deep in the ditch at a steep angle. Bill did not want to repeat this mistake with the coming garbage truck on the narrow rural road. The garbage truck slowed down and pulled over a bit for us and we carefully drove by.

On Concession 6 we stopped as we saw some bird activity across from a house. We got out and looked at the house here and viewed White breasted Nuthatches and finally Black capped Chickadees coming and going to the feeders. We did not see any other bird species. A passing Audi with two young fellows slowed down and waved to us. They did not look like birders.

We continued on to Chemin Steel. At a double curve in the usual straight road, we viewed the Audi with the two young fellows in the ditch on the opposite side on an angle. One of the fellows was out on the road and we asked if they were OK and yes they were. Bill asked if they had called for help. The young fellow said the tractor was coming from the nearby farm. We could hear it and made room for it. The tractor came and started clearing away the snow around the car and we had to move on to get out of the way. Lucky locals, they were safe and could call on a buddy with a tractor within minutes. Shortly after we saw the car blow by us on a straight part of the road. They would have a story to tell in the bar tonight.

We turned around and decided to go back up to the bottom of the Eardley-Marsham Road. Here we would eat lunch and watch for activity for a good chunk of the hills. Before we got there, we stopped and another car stopped - a local birder. Bill asked him if he saw anything and the fellow said there was nothing out today. It made us feel better. It was noon and we had only seen a few birds.

On the way to the lunch spot, we saw two flocks of Snow Buntings - one out in the field far away and the second down on the road, also a good distance away. We could see Snow Buntings but not close enough to look into the groups. There were maybe 100 birds in total.

While eating lunch on the Eardley-Masham road we constantly scanned the treeline and horizon and nothing was out flying except for several ravens. We decided to head north, cross the 148 and go down Chemin Curley and Chemin McKibbon. There are the farm fields with great views. Nothing out there except some crows and ravens.

We went down to the end of Thérien again. Bill spotted a Bald Eagle high on a distant snag. We got the scopes out. Our second Bald Eagle of the day. It was a beautiful bird. I hope a photo caught the bird. It flew shortly after that. here we bumped into the same local birder that we had met on the road earlier. Another car arrived shortly after with two other birders/photographers. The birder fellow, Donald told us about the Snow Buntings on Chemin Parker. He said he found 5 or 6 Lapland Longspurs in the group also. We then returned to the spot, a farm with two silos and many Snow Buntings. They were a fair distance away, so we could see the birds through the scope but they were flighty. No other species were spotted. We decided to start heading homeward on the 148.

We drove on Mountain Road to Vanier to the Ottawa River. Bill spotted some Mallards in the water. Barbara and Barbc tried to find the "pipping" woodpecker. It turned out to be a Hairy Woodpecker. There were Mourning Doves near the feeder. A flock of European Starlings were in flight. We checked out a potential trail that Bill learned of from a local birder, John Dubois. It may be a good spot to check out during spring migration (Rue Dorian and Rue Deschenes intersection).

We then did one last check of the feeders down nearer to the Champlain Bridge. Not even a gull hanging around. We crossed back over the Champlain Bridge and looked at the fast moving Ottawa River. We could see several Common Goldeneye in the water but it was rush hour and we had to move with the rush hour traffic. It was still sunny and the day had warmed up to -2 degrees in the afternoon.

It was strange to us that there were so few birds around today. There had been two recent subzero days with a windchill of -37. Then on Sunday it "warmed up to -12"and snow flurries. Today was the first sunny day in a while and finally a nice comfortable winter day. So today should have been a day where every bird should have been out in the sunshine and eating up a storm. Maybe the birds have left for Florida or Colombia.......