A Big Year
Canada March 2020 to April 2021 The decision to move my ticket forward by 5 weeks, proved to have been a good one. The day after I arrived in Toronto, flights were stopped between South Africa, England and Canada as travel bans took place around the world. Since Charlotte and I had already been doing the winter raptor season here between December-January earlier, we took up again with our Simcoe County Banding Group on the 17th March to the 6th April and added 10 Snowy Owls, 34 Red-tailed Hawks, 5 Rough-legged Hawks, 16 American Kestrels and 3 Northern Shrikes. All in all a good winter season with totals of; Snowy Owl x 58 Red-tailed Hawk x 132 Rough-legged Hawk x 19 American Kestrel x 52 Northern Shrike x 23 It was a nice surprise to find that we could catch Snowy Owls and Roughies into April, although, they would have to wait a while as their breeding grounds in the arctic would still be frozen until May in some regions of the Arctic. We were also seeing birds coming back up fr...