January 1, 2022, The First Day of the Rest of My Big Year: It’s Like Poetry.

The first day of my Cross Canada Adventure, here in Nova Scotia, began with a wild goose chase that resulted in my first bird of the year being a Rock Pigeon on the Wallace River Bridge.  I had been hoping to find a Pink-footed Goose, sitting on the ice in the river below.  Noooooop!  A photo had been taken of one and posted on eBird, but that had been on December 30, and it wasn’t re-found.  An inauspicious start to say the least.

                             Rock Pigeon, Species #1 of 2022

So, tail tucked firmly between my legs, I slunk back to Halifax.  I had driven 90 minutes from my hotel and it was a two hour return drive to Rainbow Haven Provincial Park, where I had scouted a Eurasian Wigeon the previous day.  Now things were starting to look up.  Not only was the tide out, but there were two of the Eurasian Wigeons walking around on the mudflats, right in front of my nose.  They were mixed in with the American Wigeons, but their reddish brown heads with stripe down the middle makes them stand out in a crowd.

       

                              Eurasian Wigeon:

The next stop was to revisit the female Tufted Duck, where I’d gone when I first arrived in Halifax.  I drove back to Sullivan’s Pond and it didn’t take long to spot the other target bird on my list.  This one is hanging around with Mallards, American Black Ducks and one hybrid farm duck.

                            Female Tufted Duck:

                                Mixed-up Duck:

I spent the rest of the day looking through the fog for my real target bird, a Dovekie, a tiny seabird that was eluding me at every stop.  Finally, less than an hour before sunset on the first day of my 2022 Canada Big Year, I spotted a pair of them, about 200 meters off of Crystal Crescent Beach.  Ten years before, on the final day of my 2012 North American Big Year, I was on my way back from my final trip of the year and wanted to make a Dovekie the final bird of the year.  The Dovekie had other plans.  I searched the beaches of Cape May until after dark.  So, it’s kind of poetic justice that, as the sun was setting on the first day of a new Big Year, I would finally complete a mission begun10 years earlier.

                                                 Dovekie:

By the time I was heading back to my car, in the rain, I had completely forgotten that I had struck out on the Pink-footed Goose, 10 hours earlier. Ain’t birding grand!