2022 was a lot better than last year! I managed to go birding 341/365 (93.4%) days this past year. Now, that doesn’t mean I walked around a lot, in the winter months it was mostly incidental lists of birds I’d see on my way to work like Red-tailed Hawks or Mourning Doves. That being said in the spring I did get out almost every single night to places I’ve become very familiar with like Hendrie Valley or RBG Marsh Boardwalk. That is what I found most rewarding this year was the sheer number of birds I saw, not necessarily the number of species I was able to see.
Speaking of the number of birds, here is my top-5 for 2022:
Topping 2022 was the Long-tailed Duck, I also managed to see more Long-tails than I’d ever seen before, 27,927 birds! That’s just shy of double the amount of birds seen in 2021.
Species #2 is no surprise since I live around the Great Lakes, Canada Goose. The most common birds in all of Southern Ontario and one of the most widespread breeders here and even more common in winter. That’s why it’s no surprise that it’s #2 on this list. I managed to see 25,499 geese, wild!
After 2 native birds of course we are moving on to an introduced one, #3 is the European Starling. Since being released in New York over a century ago they’ve expanded immensely. Somberly, I managed to see 18,547 individuals.
Back to the native birds, and another one of the more common on an Ontario-wide scale, the Ring-billed Gull. While they breed in Ontario they breed in a different way, they’re colony nesters in colonies of up to 1000+. With them being as common as they are I saw 13,646 ringers in 2022
Ending this list on another bird that most people don’t see eye to eye with, the Double-crested Cormorant. These birds are also colony nesters but their nesting can be quite destructive due to the acidity of their feces. I managed to see 12,987 individuals in 2022.
These birds made up 51% of the total individual birds seen. There were 23 other species that topped 1,000 individuals which were:
Mallard (12,074)
Red-winged Blackbird (7,746)
Herring Gull (3,295)
Greater Scaup (2,805)
Bonaparte’s Gull (2,504)
Red-breasted Merganser (2,268)
Black-capped Chickadee (2,243)
Common Goldeneye (2,072)
Common Grackle (2,006)
House Sparrow (1,963)
American Robin (1,864)
Bufflehead (1,834)
Tree Swallow (1,691)
American Crow (1,532)
Cedar Waxwing (1,431)
Common Merganser (1,377)
Song Sparrow (1,368)
Mute Swan (1,366)
Mourning Dove (1,301)
Rock Pigeon (1,263)
White-winged Scoter (1,191)
Ruddy Duck (1,115)
White-throated Sparrow (1,021)
I also saw 13 new life species this year! This was amazing:
Boreal Owl (02-Jan-2022)
Golden-crowned Sparrow (09-Jan-2022)
Louisiana Waterthrush (07-May-2022)
Eared Grebe (07-May-2022)
Hepatic Tanager (14-May-2022)
American Avocet (31-May-2022)
Little Blue Heron (21-Jul-2022)
King Rail (09-Aug-2022)
Ruff (21-Aug-2022)
Black-legged Kittiwake (01-Oct-2022)
Tropical Kingbird (13-Nov-2022)
Dickcissel (11-Dec-2022)
Townsend’s Solitaire (27-Dec-2022)
I also know people have enjoyed the graphs of the species and individuals I see each year so here they are:
I also really got into photographing the birds I’ve seen in 2022 and managed to photograph 230/271 of the species I saw in 2022. Here are a couple of my favourites:
