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Hi Everyone; Patricia Chalmers and I ran my owl route through the Bowater lands in Tantallon on Friday night. We scouted it first in the afternoon. Those woods roads often have nasty surprises, like washouts, deep muddy ruts from logging trucks, fallen trees across the road, etc. There was one small washout which my Jeep handled with ease, and a few fallen trees which I was able to get round - so we were good to go! Birds of interest that afternoon included a Red-throated Loon on Sandy Lake; several grouse, both Spruce and Ruffed, a Kingfisher, a lovely male Common Merganser, and a flock of Golden-crowned Kinglets. In the marsh behind Sobeys in Tantallon we saw and heard our first Red-winged Blackbird of the year - and the resident pair of Osprey were back on their nest. That night we were disappointed by an ATV and a Dirt Bike which totally drowned out our first stop. (ATV's aren't allowed in there, but somehow they manage to get in past the gate). Further in there were no sounds of civilization - just Loons calling, a few Spring Peepers and Wood Frogs and a Ruffed Grouse drumming. Owls were few and far between during the first half of our route; but then we detected a few distant ones of all three species: Saw-Whet, Barred and Great Horned. At our last stop we had a "mystery owl". From time to time it gave a single fairly long note. We were sure it was an owl, and we both were sure we had heard this call before, but couldn't quite place it. It was late and we were getting cold and tired, but we wrote down disatance and direction and I said I'd go home and listen to all the calls of our various owls. To my delight, it turned out to be a Long-eared Owl! That brought our total to 7 owls for the night. The bad news is the location is inaccessible to the general public. You need a special pass and a key from Bowater. Cheers; Suzanne
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