May 5, 2022 Point Pelee to Ridgetown (near Rondeau Provincial Park).

 We packed up our stuff this morning and checked out of the motel.  The day was cool and cloudy with some sun.  We took the tram to the Tip.  We walked the inner seasonal trail to the Tip and it was very very quiet.  Then once at the tip we looked down the beach.   More of the sand bar was showing today.  There were ducks off shore and along with gulls.  There were Red breasted Mergansers and Greater Black backed Gulls, Ring billed Gulls out on the water.  We took the bay-side trail back from the tip to the roadway.  Still very quiet with few birds around.  We did not climb the viewing tower today.  We walked to the Sparrow Field and were rewarded with a great view of an Eastern Bluebird.  

Further in on this trail we had a Wood Thrush and a Blue headed Vireo.  We heard the Wood Thrush sing which was lovely.  There were plenty of Ruby Crowned Kinglets around again.   .  On Woodland Trail at the bridges we had lovely looks at a Prothonotary Warbler.  We walked to our car and had lunch inside the car again.  A little too cool for us.   Here are my Prothonotary Warber.  The other day I did not have my camera.

After lunch we started out on Tilden Trail as the Yellow throated Warbler was seen on a very tall Cottonwood Tree.  It came by and there were a group of birders watching for it.  Some of us saw it and some of did not.  Jane was the luckly one to see it and it took off.  We met a nice young couple who were from Michigan (Ann Arbor).  We then decided to take the foot path trail. We had  Gray cheeked Thrush and we heard the guttural croaks of the Sandhill Cranes.  We saw many Swainson's Thrush at Pr Pelee.  Here is one of them.

We met up with Bill and Barbara Bowman at the entrance to Tilden Trail.  We had been texting each other this morming and finally had a chance to meet.  We also met their Ottawa friends who now live in Toronto, Hilda and Colin.  We had a nice catch-up on each others' news and birds and accomodation and we said goodbye to them.  Eventually we were going to end up near Rondeau Provincial Park at the Ridgetown Motel just off the 401 later this afternoon.  We said "Goodbye Pelee" as we were leaving.

But before leaving for the drive to the motel we stopped at Kopegaron Woods to see if any warblers made it there.  We heard a Northern Waterthrush and a House Wren there.  This place is lovely with many boardwalks over low flooded dark ground.  Perfect habitat for waterthrush and possibly a Prothonotary.  There were families leaving as we arrived.  Mainly Mom's with kids.  We thought maybe a home schooling group.  One little boy was coming back and he had mud up to his elbows and was pretty wet.  Another little boy was walking on the boardwalk and with us watching him, jumped off the raised boardwalk into the muddy water.  This was unexpected and surprising to us.  He was now wet and muddy!   His Mom just said "oh well". Too bad we did not take a photo of the little guy!   But then maybe that is not done these days.  We walked a short distance and returned back to our car.  We had to get going.  It is always hard to leave the Pelee area.  

It took about an hour to get to the Ridgetown Inn and a little longer than expected to get our rooms.  We unpacked our things and got back into the car to drive to the Eireau area as a White faced Ibis had been reported.  With all the irrigation canals in this area it is often difficult to get from place to another road close by.  Somehow we ended up walking one long trail called the Eireau Marsh Rail Trail (part of the Waterfront Trail) to get to the right spot to see the ibis.  It was feeding in a marsh area at the opposite end of where we started.  So we figure we walked 3 km there and back.  By this time it was 8 pm.  We made a stop for some groceries.  Here we had a flyover of Chimney Swifts and added another bird species to our trip list.  We had a late supper back at the motel.  We were all tired.  We did almost 20,000 steps today.  We will sleep well tonight.  We ended the day with 149 bird species for the trip todate.  

Tomorrow we will spend the day at Rondeau!