Day 4, Baltimore Oriole, The Tip, Point Pelee

This beautiful male Baltimore Oriole took me by surprise when it suddenly flew to close where I was standing. No time to zoom out slightly - one rapid click and away it flew. Despite missing the top of its head and the tip of its tail, you can still tell what a gorgeous, colourful species this is.

Just added 12 photos very late tonight (actually, it is almost 1:30 in the morning now). Too late to even think about adding descriptions, so will have to do that tomorrow. Hopefully, I will be able to add the last 14 or so shots from Day 4 of our trip, then it will be on to Day 5. Not all that many photos to post from Day 5, as it was a day of travelling.

Day 4 of our holiday was 10 May 2018. We had a ridiiculously early start to the day, as we had been told that American Woodcocks (Scolopax minor) tend to gather in and around the hotel parking lot. That information was just too good to ignore, so I think it was sometime after 4:00 am that we were out there, searching. As it turned out, in vain, though we did hear two individuals vocalizing in the dark bushes across the road. The American Woodcock is "a small chunky shorebird species found primarily in the eastern half of North America. Woodcocks spend most of their time on the ground in brushy, young-forest habitats, where the birds' brown, black, and gray plumage provides excellent camouflage." From Wikipedia.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_woodcock

This last day was spent at Pt Pelee, walking a few trails including at The Tip again. We also drove to The Onion Fields, just north of Pt Pelee, between Hillman Marsh and Pt Pelee, where we had a great sighting - a very, very distant male Snowy Owl, sitting way out in a field, next to a white post!! Awful photos, but will eventually post one of them, just for the record. As always, I did not manage to see every species of bird this day, but was happy to see at least some of them!

The next morning, 11 May, we had to do the very long drive from Pelee to Toronto, where we caught a plane to Quebec City, arriving there at 2:45 pm. From there, we had a long drive east to reach the small village of Tadoussac on the St. Lawrence Seaway. There, we would be staying for a week at the summer 'cabin' of one of our group of friends.

For a more detailed account of our two-week trip east, see www.flickr.com/photos/annkelliott/45038233955/in/datepost...