The Dog Days of Birding in Toronto

This week in Big Year Birding:

In August of 2012, in the heat of summer and with nowhere enough water, in Orlando, I set out on a 4 miles hike to find a Fork-tailed Flycatcher.  Not only was I limited to very small sips of water, but my old hiking shoes were giving me severe blisters.  I barely made it out of there on two feet.  You can read about it here:

http://my2012bigyear.blogspot.ca/2012/07/let-me-tell-you-story.html

Back to the present:

Late summer birding in Toronto is, well, not that exciting.  There are, to be fair, lots of cute baby birds around, including young Black-crowned Night Heron at James Gardens and the cutest little baby Cedar Waxing I found at Col. Sam Smith Park.

This time of year in Toronto your best bet is to check out areas where migrating shore birds tend to show up.  One of those spots is Ratray Marsh in Mississauga.  I had, for some reason, not seen a Lesser Yellowlegs this year, so off I went and it was the first bird I saw there.

There we're a few other shorebirds present...

Sue came along on my second visit and found this Semipalmated Plover:

and as fall migration heats up, even more shorebirds will follow, such as Buff-breasted  Sandpipers, Red-necked Phalaropes, Pectoral Sandpipers and maybe even a Hudsonian Godwit.