The weekend of September 8, 9, and 10, 2017 was a weekend for the Festival of Hawks in Amhersburg, Ontario at the Holiday Beach Conservation Area. Amherstburg is located West of Point Pelee, and South of Windsor along the Northern Shores of Lake Erie. The Festival of Hawks is held to celebrate the great migration of thousand of birds, including raptors and many other birds. I figured this was a great reason to get out and do some bird photography.
Seeing as it was going to be a long drive on a Saturday morning, I decided to drive up on the Friday and stay in Windsor for the night. Since we didn't have anything to hurry for on Friday, we decided to follow the lake all the way down to Windsor, starting in Long Point. What better place to start our journey of bird photography on the weekend.
European Starlings in their fall colours.
This route took us through places such as Port Royal, Clear Creek, Port Burwell, Copenhagen, Port Bruce, Hawks Cliff, Port Stanley, Eagle, New Glasgow, Port Glasgow, Palmyra, Rondeau, Erie Beach, Dealtown, Port Crewe, Port Alma, Wheatley, Leamington, Kingsville, and Oldcastle to name a few. What a fantastic part of Ontario to see!
Our first experience of migrating birds was a flock of European Starlings. We stumbled onto them not far from Long Point. This was a learning experience for me as I didn't realize that they had a different colour for the Fall. This required me looking them up in my new bird book "Field Guide to the Birds of North America" by National Geographic. I purchased this to replace the "A guide to Field Identification Birds of North America" by Golden that I have had for many, many years that was damaged in the flood. So the weekend adventure was off to a "flying start". How's that for a pun.
Hawks Cliff showing the holes made by the Swallows.
Canadian Geese flying over Lake Erie at Hawk Cliff.
A stop at Hawk Cliff didn't produce any results for large birds, but I did get a shot of some Canadian Geese flying across the lake and a few shots of the face of the cliff with all the holes from the birds. We also stirred up a disturbing amount of bugs. The bugs weren't much fun, but seeing the front face of the cliff and the geese flying across the lake was cool.
We did scare up a couple large hawks on our adventure to Windsor, but they didn't stick around long enough for me to get a picture or for this amateur to identify them properly. We did see and a couple other large flocks of birds but I wasn't able to identify them from a distance. One thing I did notice is that there were a large amount of Mourning Doves around.
I did stumble on a none wildlife photo op, and that was a very old house that was falling down. It certainly had a spooky look to it, but strangely the grass out front of the house was very well maintained. I stopped to take a few pics from different angles. After a few minutes of traffic wondering what I was doing, we continued on.
After stopping for coffee and a late lunch in Leamington, our next stop was in Windsor. I got a room at the Best Western Waterfront Hotel so I could get a view and some shots of the Detroit skyline at night. And this view certainly didn't disappoint. We got there just in time to catch the sun setting and was able to get some shots of the setting sun, and the shots of the Detroit skyline that I was really looking forward to. Really glad I went for the room with a view.
After taking some pictures we headed out to Caesars Casino hoping to win some money to pay for the trip. Unfortunately that didn't work out, but it was still a good time and we didn't leave broke. On our way back to the hotel we stopped for a late supper and went directly back to the room to eat and take more pictures. All in all it was a fantastic first day of our Migration Adventure.
Till next time,