Hi Birders, Just thought I'd give a quick update on the Swallow-tailed Kite that Erica Barkley and I found today just outside of Port Alma.
We were floored to see this bird circling around some trees at a house before it circled a little to the northwest over some fields before starting to head west along the lake shore. It continued along the edge of the lake heading west for about 10 minutes where it would stop and investigate any patch of trees before moving on. After about ten minutes of that it started really b-lining along the shore heading west, often being hard to keep up with. We lost it when we took a dead end road to try to get closer to the lake just east of Wheatley Provincial Park. Amazingly, we found it again on Mersea Road E (not D as I originally posted) just west of Mersea Road 19 when it flew over us and headed south over the Pelee marsh. We found a spot about 1 minute later where we could cross over the ditch and climb up onto the dyke - when we did that for some reason we couldn't find the bird but it was seen a couple minutes later over Delaurier (as reported by Jarmo Jalava) and then the large crowd that had gathered at the Visitor Centre parking lot got the bird flying almost directly overhead. All of that happened in just over 1 hour (11 am to 12 pm). As far as I heard, no one saw the bird after it passed over Woodland Nature Trail (as reported by Rob Waldhuber), which is directly south of the Visitor Centre. This is despite lots of people watching to see if the bird flew back north after reaching the point so it is possible it decided to make the crossing over Lake Erie. I know lots of people got great photos of the bird over the Visitor Centre I got a few decent shots of it near Port Alma that are on my blog: http://mikeburrell.blogspot.ca/ Interestingly, this bird was missing the outer two tail feathers on the left side of the tail - the Pickering bird two weeks ago was not, but I would be curious to know if the bird seen on Monday was also missing these feathers. Good Birding! ----------------------------------------------------------- Mike Burrell mike.burrell...@gmail.com http://mikeburrell.blogspot.com/ -- --------------------------------------------------------- Mike Burrell mike.burrell...@gmail.com http://mikeburrell.blogspot.com/ _______________________________________________ ONTBIRDS is presented by the Ontario Field Ornithologists - the provincial birding organization. Send bird reports to birdalert@ontbirds.ca For information about ONTBIRDS visit http://www.ofo.ca/
