Category: Birdathon

Saturday, 20 May, 2011 The 2011 OFO Birdathon team (myself, Chris Earley, Paul Grant, Larry Staniforth, and Bryan Wyatt) did our Birdathon in Wellington County on May 20. Our plan was to make an assault on the 147 species Big Day record for the county, obtained on a historic day in 1988. Conditions seemed ripe.…

Saturday, May 23rd, 2009 It started off well – brilliant stars and a nearly full moon, a warm, clear night, and a northbound flight of thrushes as I waited in my driveway at 2.30am for the others (no, we didn’t start at midnight). To my ears, most of the thrushes were Swainson’s and Veerys but…

Saturday, May 23rd, 2009 Rather than driving 300 kilometers and chasing half-way across Ontario, we declared that we would do our Birdathon, as “Celebrity Birders” for the Ontario Field Ornithologists, entirely within the deep dark depths of urban Toronto. When we assessed the territory and planned our route, we told prospective sponsors that we would…

Held 6:45 pm Friday, 16 May to 6:45 pm Saturday, 17 May, 2008 We were very honoured to be selected the OFO Celebrity team for the Baillie Birdathon, and determined to raise lots of money. Our plan was to start in Middlesex County, on Friday evening, where we had knowledge of nesting species. There were…

**Friday 18 May 2007. ** Ben and I were honoured to be named OFO celebrity birders in 2007. We decided to do our Baillie Birdathon in the Hamilton Study Area, an area we knew well and where we knew we could find a diverse number of birds in the diverse number of habitats that we…

24 May on a clear evening we left Toronto and headed west. Chris Escott was driving. Chester Gryski, Bob Falconer and I were the passengers. All four are members of the OFO Board of Directors. Our first of several anxious moments came when we were detoured around Caledonia because of a blockade but we were…

Preamble: It was one of those offers too good to refuse. When Chris Escott, President of the Ontario Field Ornithologists, first approached us to see if we would be interested in being the OFO Celebrity Birders for 2005 we were a little concerned that we possessed the proper qualifications required. Although we had both been…