Category: Events

Hi Everyone Over the decades I’ve done many “big days” starting in the mid 1970s on my bicycle and into the 1990s and early 2000s on competitive big days at the World Series of Birding, Texas Birding Classic and Taverner Cup. I thought I had seen all the possible weather conditions. Not so. I’ve dealt…

Report Celebrity Birders 2016

Thank you very much for sponsoring me in the Baillie Birdathon this year. It is a great honour and pleasure to have been asked by OFO to be the guest birder for 2014. While there are lots of potential routes to try and generate a big list, I stayed with my heart and focused my…

2 June 2013 James Holdsworth, Frank Pinilla, Richard Skevington and I were honoured to be the Ontario Field Ornithologists’ celebrity birders in this year’s birdathon. With your help, about $3000 was raised. Twenty-five percent of this goes to support the OFO and the rest goes to Bird Studies Canada to support their programs. We decided…

With great spring weather promised over the long week-end, I looked forward to doing my Birdathon where I had started birding in the late 1940s, in the Kingston area as a member of one of the teams that take part in the Kingston Field Naturalists’ annual spring round-up. Someone reminded us of how our birding…

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…