This year marked the 10th consecutive run for the team of Bob Bracken, Bernie Ladouceur and Chris Lewis, and although we didn't find as many species as in previous years, as always we enjoyed "working" for every single bird ..and we were rewarded with several interesting observations on August 30th, 2009.

Dynamic weather has aided us during many of our Seedathon experiences over the past 10 years. This year tropical storm "Danny" hit the Maritimes on the weekend of Aug. 29th - 30th, and to our region he brought strong east winds and a lot of rain but moved off just in time to give us perfect birding weather for our Big Day in the 50K. We even saw the stars when we began at 4:30 AM.

The eerie sound of a juvenile Long-eared Owl in the Munster area was a great start, followed by a Barred Owl flying in to check us out. Perhaps not surprising due to the abundance of water after one of the wettest coolest summers on record was the large number of ducks quacking and flying around even before daybreak. This year was our first for finding a Common Nighthawk at dawn instead of dusk, and although several Veeries and Swainson's Thrushes were vocalizing, songbirds were relatively scarce until we hit two of our favourite hot spots - the Carp Hills and the Britannia Conservation Area. Three species of vireos, 16 species of warblers and multiple Baltimore Orioles were among our highlights; in particular a bizarrely red oriole caught our attention and had us scratching our heads for quite a while. Further research revealed this aberrant plumage can be caused by ingestion of Rhodoxanthin, a chemical found in the berries of introduced Honeysuckle species which are abundant ornamental shrubs. Cedar Waxwings are also fond of these berries and consequently may develop orange rather than yellow tips on their tails. Speaking of Cedar Waxwings, there seemed to be a bumper crop of them as well this year. On Seedathon day they were ubiquitous to the point of being annoying as they demonstrated their talent for visual mimicry - imitating everything from Olive-sided Flycatcher to Eastern Bluebird to Clay-coloured Sparrow: all species we were hoping to find but missed.

Among 15 species of waterfowl, highlights included our first Brant for the Seedathon (an easy target, as one had spent most of the summer happily mowing the lawn at Andrew Haydon Park), and five surprisingly early Greater Scaup on the Ottawa River. Britannia also produced both Green Heron and Black-crowned Night-Heron, and a fly-over Upland Sandpiper was a nice start to our shorebird list before we headed east in the afternoon to seek more. A beautiful breeding-plumaged Black-bellied Plover was a treat and we were also fortunate to observe two Red Phalaropes at one of the eastern sewage lagoons; unfortunately they were not inclined to stick around. In all we tallied 12 species of waders, a respectable number considering the lack of feeding habitat in many locations.

Some of our more entertaining discoveries were several Wild Turkeys with young, Merlins stirring things up in three separate locations, hundreds of swallows feeding on insects over the Deschênes rapids and the Embrun lagoons, a very busy and vocal family of House Wrens near Russell...and we'll always wonder what was among those huge but prohibitively distant flocks of shorebirds that flew over as we were compiling our list at the end of the day - we know they weren't Cedar Waxwings!

After 14 hours in the field (312 km driven, approx. 10 km on foot) we managed to round up 114 species, and thanks to YOUR generous support we should have some well-fed customers at the OFNC feeders for all to enjoy this winter!

Maps to all the feeders are on the OFNC web site, on the Birding page.