Northern Bluet – OdoNotations

On August 7th I met up with Chris Lewis at Shirley’s Bay for a morning of birding and dragon-hunting. The morning got off to a great start when I saw a group of Wild Turkeys along Rifle Road even before I met Chris at the parking lot; there were two adults and a couple of baby turkeys. At Shirley’s Bay Chris and I tallied 44 species altogether, including a juvenile Osprey which landed in the Osprey nest down the road, five Common Terns and 11 Caspian Terns flying about, a Pectoral Sandpiper, a Semipalmated Sandpiper, a Solitary Sandpiper, and a single American Wigeon in the bay with the usual dabbling ducks, and a flock of migrating songbirds in the woods. The flock included a Yellow Warbler, a Chestnut-sided Warbler, a Black-and-white Warbler, and a couple of Gray Catbirds, and a Rose-breasted Grosbeak.

On August 16th Chris Lewis and I went to the Bill Mason Center to do some dragon-hunting. As the weatherman was predicting a steamy high of 30°C with 100% humidity, we met at 7:30 in the morning in order to beat the heat. For the second day in a row, a thick early-morning fog hung low over Ottawa, but once we arrived at the sand pit we found a bright, sunny morning with no trace of fog. It was really starting to warm up by then, but as it was still early in the day, all we saw at first were a couple of darners we accidentally scared up from the vegetation along the northwestern side of the pond. None were cooperative; instead of settling back down in a spot where we could see them, they zoomed off altogether.