Toronto Ornithological Club Fall Field Day, Tommy Thompson Park

The TOC does a fall field day every year, and has done since 1934. This year, there was a formal division into groups looking at different areas—Tommy Thompson Park, High Park and area, and Durham Region.

In the interest of logistical sanity, I went on the Tommy Thompson part of this, since that was the easiest of the three areas for me to get myself to.

Despite that, I managed to miss four TTC connections in a row by margins of less than 30 seconds, and got there half an hour late. Fortunately, I knew where the group would have gone, and was able to catch up with the group by 08h30. The group, ably led by John Carley, started at 15 and was down to 7 by 16h00 or so, when there was a collective declaration of it being a day.

Out of the 53 bird species seen on the Tommy Thompson part of the walk, I saw 31:

black duck
bluejay
bluewing teal
brown-headed cowbird
brown thrasher
Canada goose
canvasback duck
cedar waxwing
double-crested cormorant
eastern phoebe
European starling
gadwall
goldfinch
great blue heron
great egret
green heron (impressively hard to see when it holds still)
greenwing teal (~60 in a flock, flying; this is very vivid)
grey catbird
herring gull
hooded merganser (juvenile)
killdeer
kingfisher
mallard duck
mourning dove
mute swan
northern flicker
peregrine falcon
redhead duck
redstart
shoveler duck
spotted sandpiper