Evening Grosbeak - Gros-bec errant

This was one of the rare instances in my birding and photography experience where a species was completely unexpected (by me, not by others) and it showed upright before sunrise on the cliffs by Prince Edward Point. I was prepared for the spring migration of brightly-coloured Warblers to begin; not for some tardy bird from the North to be heading home for summer. Instead of songbirds filling the morning air with their noisy and tuneful interactions, we found the species that doesn’t have a song.

 

But like the other migrants, she just flew in from down south and boy were her arms tired! The morning was awash in small insects of varying types, and this bird was cleaning up everything she could find. She was gone in twenty minutes, moving on northward.

 

Because I have had most of my experience with the species in Algonquin Park or in a small corner of a forest southeast of Ottawa, always in the winter and always on its coldest days, it was also quite striking to see one in the spring sunshine.

Done