Old Cut

I apologise for the lack of postings of late and this has been down to a combination of poor weather and all my birding being site visits for work, and I am sure you are fed up about hearing of these! So by way of keeping the blog going I picked an old notebook off the shelf from 1989. I am fortunate in having all my field notebooks from when I started birding in 1976 and they are a great source of nostalgia. They also highlight the changes in the fortunes of some bird populations; some good, but mainly bad!

In 1989 I was fortunate enough to spend nearly a year volunteering at Long Point Bird Observatory near Port Rowan in southern Ontario, Canada. On this day, 31st July, in 1989 I was at the Old Cut field station preparing for a period of daily recording at the end of Long Point known as the Tip. Old Cut was the field station at the base of Long Point, which is the promontory that stretches 20 miles in to Lake Erie from it's northern shore line. In addition to the two field stations already mentioned there is Breakwater that is about five miles out along the spit. It's a bit like Spurn Point on steroids!

Old Cut is surrounded by summer cottages and other residential buildings close to the lake shore, and the main habitat at the field station is scrubby woodland associated with marshes and wetland.

The majority of the day on 31st July 1989 was spent procuring provisions for a two week stint at the Tip. Our task was to open the field station at the end of Long Point for the autumn season. This would entail clearing the mist net rides, putting up the mist nets and carrying out any repairs on the Helgoalnd trap there. So the birding at Old Cut on this day was limited.

My notebook tells me that it was warm with two oktas cloud cover and just two birds were banded (ringed); a Least Flycatcher and a Barn Swallow. The most interesting bird was an immature Bald Eagle that flew over during the morning and Caspian Terns were flying over the field station to various feeding areas on the lake, and I counted 15 (the following day I counted 65). Thirty Black Ducks wasn't unusual and neither was the ten Cedar Waxwings. It always felt most odd encountering Waxwings (although not our waxwing the Bohemian in North America) on a warm sunny day, when we usually associate them with winter birding!

Other bits and pieces from my notebook that day were four Pine Siskins, a Forsters Tern, four Green Herons (Green-backed Heron then) and two Black-crowned Night Herons.

Firmly back in the 21st Century the forecast isn't great for the week ahead with the position of the jet stream leading to a conveyor belt of westerly weather systems. Oh well, I might have to look at an old notebook again!