The Long-tailed Ducks of Lake Ontario

 

As always, click the photo to enlarge

The view of downtown Toronto, from Tommy Thompson Park. Sometimes known as the "Leslie Street Spit", this place extends about three miles out into Lake Ontario. The park is a case of making lemonade from lemons. The origin of the "spit" is dredged material from the harbor, which began in 1959. Over the years, millions of cubic meters of dredge spoil were pumped into diked embayments, creating the "islands" that form the park. Over time, Tommy Thompson Park developed into a legendary birding site.

Shauna and I spent most of a day here, and the action came hot and heavy. Scads of waterfowl of many species use the surrounding lake and often offer great photo ops. It was a decent workout, too, as we ended up hiking 7.1 miles, armed with our heavy gear. It was worth every step, though.

A young Gray Birch (Betula populifolia) forest has sprung up in places. It was one of relatively few native plants that I noticed. I bet when Toronto experiences redpoll irruptions, this is a good place to be. The birch produces copious catkins, a favorite food source of redpolls.

Probably the coolest non-waterfowl bird that we saw was a Snowy Owl. It, unfortunately, was the victim of overzealous birders chasing it around and flushing it.

Three drake Long-tailed Ducks (Clangula hyemalis) land among a small flock. Some Common Goldeneyes (Bucephala clangula) are in the foreground.

We saw hundreds of Long-tailed Ducks from Tommy Thompson Park vantage points, maybe thousands. Evidence from aerial surveys suggest that as many as 700,000 Long-tailed Ducks winter on Lake Ontario. That's approaching 10% of the overall North American population, although the total population is just an estimate. Long-tailed Ducks are tough to get a handle on, due to their remote northerly nesting locations, and often difficult to access/survey wintering grounds.

A hen Long-tailed Duck swoops low over two Red-breasted Mergansers and three Common Goldeneye. Both of those species are also very common here.

Three drake Long-tailed Ducks lead a hen. This species is often very active, either feeding via long dives, scoot/flying short distances across the water to new feeding sites or just making rapid flights in small squadrons. One can often hear the baying of flocks from quite some distance.

Three hens drop into the water in near-perfect synchronicity. Tommy Thompson can be a goldmine for in-flight shots of waterfowl. I was using my Canon R5 and 800mm f/5.6 lens. The day before, I used the same rig but with the 1.4x teleconverter attached, for a focal reach of 1120mm. However, the addition of the teleconverter leads to more missed shots and reduces sharpness somewhat. In general, I've found that just using the bare 800mm delivers a noticeably higher rate of keepers, especially with fast-moving species such as waterfowl.

A hen Long-tailed Duck preens her feathers. I find that I often go for hen waterfowl first, in regard to picture-making. After all, everyone generally prioritizes males, so there is less imagery of the hens. Yet female ducks are often incredibly ornate in feather detailing and coloration. Long-tailed hens also have a lovely little wren-like tail.

A hen shows off one of her giant webbed feet. That foot is the size of her head. Long-tailed Ducks are known to dive to at least 215 feet (unfortunately, because that's the deepest that one has been caught in a deepwater fishing seine). But the undoubtedly can go deeper, perhaps much deeper. It takes big, webbed feet to dive to such depths.

Another view of a hen Long-tailed Duck, with her all-dark bill.

A young male, sporting its mostly pink bill. It was a treat to be able to watch so many Long-tailed Ducks and enjoy their calls and behavior. They're highly social and mixed flocks of adults of both sexes, along with juveniles, were the norm.

We hit about a dozen lakefront sites, from Grimsby, Ontario to Toronto. Just about all of them produced lots of birds, although good photographic opportunities varied from site to site. If I were to do another winter western Lake Ontario trip - which I will - and only had two full days - as we did on this trip - I'd likely just hit two spots. They'd be Fifty Point Conservation Area near Hamilton, where we had lots of action, and Tommy Thompson Park. But we always chat up locals and met many on this trip. They often have great ideas for places that weren't on our radar screen, so one should be ready to adapt plans based on new intel. But visits to Fifty Point and Tommy Thompson should yield oodles of cool photo ops.