There I was painting a female Dickcissel for “The Birds of Brazil” when a phone call from MK got me all on edge. “Have you heard about the Thick-billed Murre in Kingston?” NO! “Wanna go?” YES! It was as simple as that. One look at the photos posted on e-bird and I was pretty excited already. I was somewhat less excited about the prospect of getting out of bed at 3 in the morning though, as may well imagine. However, one has to suffer from time to time I guess…
Way back in early December 1995 we did a similar thing, only it was an even earlier start and a longer journey – to Ottawa! It was a dismal failure and we dipped not only on the Murre, but also on a Northern Fulmar. It was an unreasonably long and depressing trudge back to Toronto that day, but we joked about our bad luck as best we could. Would this be a repeat? Only time would tell.
Arriving at the crack of daybreak we were almost the first to arrive at the spot. First impression was not good, no bird. Then I slipped on some ice and sheared the lower third of one of my tripod legs clean off! Now I couldn’t even look for the bird properly! However, I thanked my lucky stars I wasn’t hurt or had my camera on my shoulder as it would surely have suffered some damage. A few other birders were arriving by this stage, including the Ottawa contingency and the crack Hamilton team! More eyes was a good thing.
MK and I motored a short distance east to the foot of Johnson Street. I got out and there it was! Along with a gang of admirers. The rest is, as they say, history. We watched the bird for a good three hours noting every detail and taking hundreds of nice photos. The sighting was tinged with sadness though as the bird did not look well, sickly even. Much of the time it floated around with its eyes closed, occasionally preening or stretching its wings. We saw it dive a couple of times early on, but couldn’t tell if it caught anything. It appeared immaculate apart from a slight indentation on its forehead.
Here are a few photos of the bird. I tried to capture it with different coloured water as a backdrop in an attempt to liven things up a bit as the bird was fairly static much of the time…
Bit overkill on the photos, sorry. This represented only the second Ontario record since 1953. Previous to this Thick-billed Murres were somewhat more regular and had even occurred in wrecks involving many individuals, presumably entering Lake Ontario from the St. Lawrence River. Who knows when the next one will be.
There were few other birds present, not that we were complaining! A couple of Common Loons offered some variety…
And that was about it. Even the drive home didn’t seem so bad…