Get your own Free Home Page
Friday April 29,2005:
Left Jackson around 8:30 PM. Had a snack at Tim Horton’s (a Coffee Shop started in Canada) in Dearborn. We got lost in Leamington, Ont. Had to call the Ramada Inn and got Mr. Bangladesh … whom didn’t give directions in English or French. We did find the Inn eventually…surprisingly it was next to a Tim Horton’s. After we got settled we tried to watch tv but we could only understand “vou” and “oui”.
Saturday April 30, 2005:
Got up at the crack of 10:30 (AM!) Ate a nice breakfast at “Sherman Station”. We drove to “The Point”. Got lost one time heading out there…(it’s a peninsula..how can somebody get lost on that……it even had signs!)
Oh yeah.. I forgot to mention, Leta at some point during the night, said she wasn’t feeling well. She tested her blood sugar level and it was only 47! Luckily we had some orange juice and granola bars which she quickly ate and soon recovered.
Anyway…we finally made it to the park headquarters around 1PM and signed up for a guided walk but had to wait a half hour for the group to form. While waiting for 1:30 to roll around… Leta overheard the “Hostess” describing the ‘bird sighting sheets” (the ones filled out by the guests) as the “Lie Logs”. Also while waiting, a reporter and photographer from the Windsor paper showed up, along with a group of recent graduate students, who had formed their own company and had won a contract to film a documentary for school kids on “Jobs in the Environment”.
So our group consisted of the reporters, film crew, Leta and myself and was lead by “The Bird Expert, Dave”, we know he was the bird expert because his name tag said so. We headed out on our scheduled 2 hour adventure (why does the theme song from Gilligan’s Island suddenly pop into my head???).
The film crew had filmed us doing different birding stuff. Like walking, pointing, talking, flipping through the guide book, etc. We did this all in a most authentic manner, if I must say so myself. Unfortunately , they didn’t think so, and felt they had to give us direction…like “walk closer to the camera…..NO..don’t look at it…” etc. Soon however, they got bored with us walking, talking, flipping etc… and left us to go see if they could see and film some birds.
A few ‘sidebar’ comments at this point. 1) I was very happy that I didn’t show any preference towards either of my kids…I had on a Gordon College baseball cap, and a DePaw University sweatshirt. 2) I sure bet Dave (THE bird expert) hopes he brushed his teeth, as they filmed several EXTREME closeups of him. They literally got within inches of his face.
After “The Media” left us (we even had to sign “model releases” so they could use us in the film) it was just Leta and I with Dave. We spent a leisurely afternoon with a most enjoyable and knowledgeable fellow, even if he had to say, “eh” at the end of every 5th sentence or so. Seriously, he was a great guide, lives near Sarnia and has a great wealth of facts and advice on birding. He said his life list has something like 320 species.
The birding was slow but not as bad as I indicated earlier. Either on our own or in the park and on the guided hike, we saw 26 species, a couple of which I think our new to our life list, although I haven’t checked for sure, before I typed this report up. The lists of birds we saw included Robin, Chipping Sparrow, Starling, Killdeer, Great Blue Heron, Red-Winged Black Bird, Grackles, Canada Goose, Turkey Vulture, Ruby Crowned Kinglet, Cormorant, White Throated Sparrow, Butter Butt (Yellow Rumped Warbler), Yellow Bellied Sap Sucker, Blue Grey Gnat Catcher, Phoebe, Dark eyed Junko, Red Breasted Merganser, Lesser Scaup, Purple Martin, Red Bellied Woodpecker, Crow, Barn Swallow, Tree Swallow, Mourning Dove, and Pie Billed Grebe.
After our hike was over, we headed back to town, but HAD to stop at a “Nature Store” and shop. We bought hats, earrings, pins, postcards, bookmarks and I don’t know what else.
Coming into town last night, we saw an …interesting..if that’s the right word, restaurant. “The Noodle Factory” .. sounds ok so far… but wait.. it was “Jose’s” Noodle Factory that advertised “fine Mexican and Italian food”. And this was in “Little Mexico”…there were hundreds if not thousands of Mexican’s in Leamington. (Leta and I decided they work in the green houses that are everywhere! There were many Mexican restaurants and even two Mexican grocery stores!
We weren’t convinced this was the place to eat, but after changing our minds 2 or 3 times and unable to agree on anywhere else, we went back to Jose’s. What a great surprise. Leta said the margerita was wonderful and she also liked the bow-tie pasta, with shrimp, mushrooms and, of course, tomatoes. Leamington is the tomato capital of the world! Besides the 1,000 of greenhouses, they have a huge Heinz factory. I had lasagna, and it was great. I ate every bite. The bread was noteworthy too. It had lots of garlic and was served with olive oil brushed on the top. Leta and I both opted for the garden salad and the fresh grated Parmesan Cheese over our entrée’s. Of course, dinner was preceded by the complementary chips and salsa.
After dinner we went back to the point for a little more birding but it was cold and overcast. We walked the Marsh Boardwalk but didn’t see much. So we headed back to town. This being Saturday night, we had an obligation to keep a family tradition alive, so we had a SNT (Saturday Night Treat) at the local Dairy Queen.
We checked out the local Walmart and headed back to the hotel. We each enjoyed the Jacuzzi tub (I’m actually concerned about getting Leta to leave the tub behind.) After our baths, I wrote the rough draft of this report and called it a day.
Sunday May 1, 2005:
Got up a bit earlier and ate breakfast at Gallagher’s, a sports like bar in the heart of downtown Leamington. We had a nice buffet, with scrambled eggs, eggs benedict, bacon, fresh melons, strawberries and pineapple, potatoes and of course wonderful light and flakey croissants. Then went to the park and caught the “train” down to the tip. We got off and sorta wandered off towards the ‘east beach’ where the rangers had noted on a large map, back at Park Headquarters, that a Prothonotary Warbler had been seen. This is a beautiful yellow warbler that we have heard is iridescent and ‘glows’ between bright yellow and orange, depending on the lighting. Unfortunately, we didn’t note closely enough exactly where it was located.
We followed a couple people and noted them looking at birds, and we saw some yellow rumped warblers, and lots of swallows, and just off the shore were the red breasted mergansers and a cormorant. As we walked back into the woods a guy ran up to us, holding out his field guide and asked if we thought (his first mistake!) the bird he pointed out to us was “immature” yellow rump. We found the bird he was talking about and noted its smaller size and “duller” markings. So we agreed with him, that because there were large flocks of the yellow rumps around it was probably a Butterbutt…but it bothered me a bit that it was “immature”. Why would there be a youngster with them at this time of the year…
Anyhow we continued to hike around, spotting several more yellow rumps, a dark eyed junco, turkey vultures, purple martins, white breasted nuthatch, and heard but didn’t see a wild turkey. It was very cold and very windy, with the surf pounding. So we headed back to the “train” after 40 minutes or so. On the train I was flipping through our field guide and thinking about the ‘immature yellow rump” and noticed that the Northern Parula, was smaller and duller than the yellow rump. As I flipped back and forth between the yellow rump and the Parula pages, I got to thinking…is THIS what we saw? Then I seemed to recall that I had seen on the ‘lie logs’ that a N. Parula had been seen. I was never able to see the bird through my binoculars but only by ‘eye’ so I wasn’t sure about the markings and colorings and other field identifiers, but Leta did and she quickly agreed with me, that it was a N. Parula.
When we got back to the park headquarters, I rushed in to check the sighting logs, and was deflated when no N. Parula was listed. I glanced at the large wall map and noticed that the sightings of warbles were listed with both the English and the French names and the name for warbler in French was close enough to Parula that I was convinced that is what I saw and confused…
As we walked back out, I told Leta how dejected I felt, and she said, no one had been spotted, RIGHT where we had seen it. So we ran back to the map and lo’ and behold, there it was! The positioning on the map was very accurate. And then I wished we had used that map closer to find the Prothonotary Warbler!
We also saw robins; grackles, starlings, Great Blue Heron, Canada goose and we did see a wild turkey along the road (yes it was alive) as we headed back to Windsor. We stopped to help the Canadian economy in Windsor by shopping at the outlet store, and playing at the Casino. We cleared customs without incident, they didn’t ask for ANY ID, and got home around 10:30.
All in all a GREAT trip and one we hope to repeat in a few weeks to see the Tanagers!
Click here to return to main page Click here to return to the birding home page
This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page