TOC: West Toronto Lakeshore

It's official spring; I've seen a singing male red-winged blackbird.

In, it must be admitted, hard cold rain, and lots of it; it rained solid from 08h30 until 13h00 or so, when, conscious of the dropping temperature, the chill creeping into everyone's bones, and the increasing and distressful tendency of the rain to rattle[1], we called it a day.

During said day I saw 25 species; I may have missed a few (because of reconstructing this after the fact; taking notes in the hard driving rain seemed unwise, because the notebook has to go somewhere, which would have meant opening a hole in the goretex or soaking a bag...) but I think this list is correct.


American widgeon
black duck
bufflehead
canvasback
chickadee
Canada goose
common goldeneye
common merganser
greater scaup
herring gull
hooded merganser
long-tailed duck
mallard duck
mute swan
northern cardinal
northern shrike
red-breasted merganser
red-winged blackbird
redhead
ring-billed gull
rock dove
song sparrow
starling
trumpeter swan
white-winged scoter



[1] for those in southern climes, the rain starts rattling when it's thinking about turning into freezing rain, if only it can get the ground to co-operate by going to -1 C or so.