Ottawa Area Birding: Birding Day “up the Valley”

Tuesday January 21, 2025

Jane is still taking a rest recovering from pneumonia. Hopefully next week she will join us.

BarbC wrote this report.

It was a sunny morning and -14 degrees at 8 am. The CBC radio reported that at 6 am that it was -22 with the wind.

Bill and Barbara, Eleanor, Anita, and BarbC met at Eagleson Park and Ride. We saw a couple of American Crows flying overhead. We assembled into two vehicles with Bill and Ian driving their SUVs. Just before we left the park and ride parking lot, the Bowmans spotted a large bird in the distance. A scope was needed for the ID. There were four similar large forms in a neighbouring tree. Was it a raptor? Nope, the big bird turned its head, a small head was viewed. These were all Wild Turkeys. Five of them likely were still in their night roost tree protected from predators. We smiled. We remembered that the last birding day we saw not a single Wild Turkey! So this is very apropos: the second bird of the day – 5 Wild Turkeys. More on this later!

So we set off with hopes of seeing Gray Partridge, large flocks of Snow Buntings with some Lapland Longspurs and Horned Larks mixed in, and at Forest Lea Road, Bald and Golden Eagles at a wolf kill in a field. All these were reported recently in e-bird.

We did not see much on the highway up to Cobden. It was a very cold day, so maybe birds were still in their night boltholes/roosts. We met up with Anne in Cobden and she travelled with the Bowmans and Anita.

We had a restroom break at Cobden and some of us had Tims. We headed to Snake River Line (SRL).

SRL up to and including Turcotte Road is where the partridge have been reported fairly often the last couple of weeks. So we went very slowly looking down the cut corn rows for anything dark and moving between the rows. I asked Ian to stop at several times where there were dark spots, but these were corn stalk birds. We laughed. At the first right off SRL we turned down Turcotte Road. We spotted a single Snow Bunting on the road. But there were more Snow Buntings flying around in the nearby cattle yard: maybe a flock of 50. The Snow Buntings flew up into nearby trees. A group of Snow Buntings is called a drift of Snow Buntings. We were not only looking for the Snow Buntings but mixed in with the Snow Buntings, several darker birds, Lapland Longspurs and Horned Larks have been reported. We took photos and had good looks at the flock/drift but none of us saw any dark birds which would stand out from the light colours Snow Buntings.

On one of the silos near the end of Turcotte, near the highway 17 intersection, there were Rock Pigeons on the roof taking in the sunshine on a very cold day. We turned around on Turcotte just before Highway 17 and drove slowly down Turcotte again and then we turned right onto SRL and continued to look for partridge. After several fields some dark moving forms were seen down a fair distance in rows of cut corn stalks. The stalks were cut quite high and we counted 4 GRPA moving around feeding. It was interesting as once the partridge went into the corn row, the partridge disappeared. We had two scopes out and we had nice looks at the partridge. All of us were thrilled to see the partridge. These were the only partridge we saw today.

We continued down SRL and at civic address 817 one of us spotted a raptor on a post in the back of a farmhouse. We looked and took some photos. The raptor was a juvenile. Some of us thought Cooper’s Hawk and Bill thought it could be a Goshawk, which would be great. A study of Barbara’s photo of the hawk shows a lot of detail for ID purposes. Bill is 99% sure it is a Goshawk. There was some discussion on the ID.

The lady of this house came outside to call out to us and we asked her if she had seen any Snowy Owls this year. Nope. Not this year. We called out “Have a nice day to her”. We also met a gent driving a truck. He said he lived in Micksburg. We asked if he had seen any owls around: no.

We continued down SRL and just before the Snake River Bridge we stopped at #1703 as there were assorted bird feeders on a type of ladder structure and there were birds: Black capped Chickadee, White breasted Nuthatch and Blue Jay.

It was around 11am by now and it was decided that we would head to Forest Lea Road about 25 minutes away via highway 17 heading north. A wolf kill had been reported on e-bird several times last week and on Sunday. There were both Bald and Golden Eagles reported. A flock of 41 Evening Grosbeaks was reported somewhere around 1537 Forest Lea Road also. A flock of Evening Grosbeaks is called...... a flock of Evening Grosbeaks!

We arrived at Forest Lea and looked around, no bird activity no carcass visible. This flummoxed me as we knew we were in the right spot according to the reported sighting. A real bird mystery. I asked the others if they knew whether it was possible to contact the person who reported the e-bird sighting. Nope, they didn’t think it was possible.

At the end of the road we came to the Pembroke Cross Country Ski Club. Bill said that he had been here skiing some years ago. We were able to use the facilities for a rest break and we had lunch in our vehicles. It was so pleasant in this sheltered spot. There were a bunch of people on cross country skis. We talked with one gent who said that the group of young adults were from Toronto and they had never cross country skied before. The Pembroke club was giving the group some Nordic skiing lessons.

After lunch we headed back down Forest Lea and noted that the last three properties had feeders visible from the road. There are some impressive hills in the Ottawa Valley and there is quite the hill on Forest Lea. At the top of the road there were feeders at a house and we stopped and saw a Pileated Woodpecker at a suet feeder hanging on while the feeder was turning around slowly. It flew off shortly. We could hear American Goldfinch calling. There were some Mourning Doves in a nearby tree.

We decided to head toward home with a last drive on SRL. We drove down Doran Road, crossed highway 58 and took Woito Station Road and stopped at the Pembroke Dump. There were three juvenile Bald Eagles in the trees. European Starlings and Common Ravens and American Crows were flying around. It was a very busy place.

We eventually ended up on SRL and again turned off on Turcotte Road: the cattle were still in the cattle yard but there were no birds. Then we turned left on to the last southern bit of SRL. We saw a flock of Snow Buntings flying and they flew to a roof line of a cattle shed and then flew down to the ground near the cattle. We don’t know if there were any dark birds in the group. Maybe there is a photo but it was quite distant.

The one thing we noted today were the many flocks of Wild Turkeys all over the valley fields. Another collective name for a flock of Wild Turkeys is a “rafter of Turkeys”. The flocks ranged from a couple to 20 to 40 plus Wild Turkeys. If all these have young in the spring.....there will be a population explosion of Wild Turkeys. Something to look forward to.

Thank you to Bill and Ian for driving. Thanks for the photos from the photographers. It was great to have Anne with us. Eleanor and I were the spotters in our car since we were not driving. Barbara was always exploring and taking photos. I hope Anita who is new to the group enjoyed her birding day. We hope you join us again.