Travel birding pt 1 - Iceland and Canada

Sunday 28th January saw us set-off on a brilliant travel holiday, taking in Iceland, Niagara Falls, and New York. Iceland was absolutely fantastic in terms of an experience and for scenery and waterfalls, but fairly light on the avian front, not that I was actively birding per say, but more taking advantage of the trip to see what incidentals I could pick up. The Iceland bird list pretty much went as follows – ptarmigan (from bus), whooper (Reykjavik), tufted duck, teal, greylag, snow bunting (Vik and Blue Lagoon), starling, house sparrow, peregrine (at Thingvellir - don’t think it was a gyrfalcon) fulmar, various gulls, redwing, and that seemed about it. I did also get a glimpse of some distant ducks from the tour bus which I would have loved to have double checked for harlequin or barrow’s if we were able to stop.    

We arrived into Toronto and shuttled to Niagara Falls where, after a long 30 hour day on Jess’ 30th, I plucked up some courage and proposed.  

When I woke up the next day I took in the Falls view from the hotel window. I could see lots of gulls in the swirl of the falls, and clocked a big bird of prey out over the water, which I’ve identified as being a red-tailed hawk from pictures. A walk up to Dufferin Islands revealed lots of mergansers, canvasback, as well as others like scaup, goldeneye, hooded merganser, bufflehead, ring-necked duck, and ring-billed gull (plenty of rings going on). 

 I also got great views of black-capped chickadee and an incredibly tame downy woodpecker. 

The next day I caught up with several dark-eyed junco in the same area as the downy, and a cardinal. It was freezing today, down to minus 10! The river was freezing over before our eyes, and as such it closed up a lot of the areas in which the waterfowl had been previously.  

Dufferin Islands were frozen over and didn’t reveal as many birds as I had hoped but also added American Black Duck for me, and we saw a sharp-shinned hawk on the way back down.