'A pretty incredible moment': Grad student shares what it's like spotting rare birds in Windsor-Essex
Cam Chevalier compiled 36-page report after Windsor-Essex broke 52 records for local bird sightings
Windsor-Essex broke 52 records for local bird sightings last year. There was a high count of pelicans and a first nesting record for a rare and endangered owl.
Cam Chevalier — a grad student at the University of Windsor — has it all compiled in a 36-page report, which reads like a birder's yearbook for 2024. He took on the task a couple years earlier after noticing that no one had been tracking all the activity of the many avid birders in the region.
Chevalier talked with CBC Windsor's Amy Dodge about the project.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Amy Dodge: How many different species of birds were spotted in our region in 2024?
Cam Chevalier: Three hundred and five, which is pretty incredible. All time, we've recorded about 400, so to get over 75 per cent of that in one year is really impressive for sure.
AD: What was the most exciting bird that was spotted?
CC: That's always a tough one. There's so many exciting ones, but the barn owl stood out as a major exciting point for us. And we did have Canada's first nesting record of blue grosbeak, and that was actually in the Windsor area, cool enough. So that was just in the Ojibway Complex. So it's very interesting to have a first nesting record for the entire country last year. So that definitely stood out as a highlight as well.
AD: What's it like when you see a rare bird that you know is breaking a record?
CC: It's a pretty incredible moment. That's sort of, I think the birder's high, if you can call it that. It's a really exciting moment of recognizing that something is very different from what we normally get to see around here. As birders, we kind of get familiar with what species we can expect are rarities, things that we might be hoping to see, and finally encountering one of those is really, really rewarding.
AD: What was it like when you saw the barn owl?
CC: That's a dream come true. That's such a rare species for us. We've had four records since 2014, so basically in the last 10 years, which might seem like enough, but really the last report from the Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas only suggests that like five to 10 pairs breed in the whole province. So coming across any individual barn owls is really kind of a magical experience. And yeah, we got to see it fly and sit in the trees and stuff. [It] was really incredible.
AD: Where did you see it?
CC: It was found by a good friend, Mike St. Pierre, on private property, unfortunately, in Windsor, but we got permission to enter the property. I was at school when I found out about it and was able to make it in time before dusk. We got to observe it there on the property with Mike and a couple other close friends of mine. It was awesome.
AD: And you spotted some Arctic terns last year. Why is that significant?
CC: Arctic tern is a pretty major rarity for us. We only had a handful of records before last year. Last year, we actually had three different Arctic terns in the county, and I spotted two of them. I was fortunate enough to be the one to find two of them at the tip of Point Pelee. It's the world's longest migrating animal, so it travels all the way from the Arctic to the Antarctic every year. So it showing up in Point Pelee is pretty rare, you know, anywhere inland, really off the ocean is always a rarity, and what was especially exciting about the second one on June 19 is that there's a huge group of students down at the tip of Point Pelee, and so I was able to share that find with a whole bunch of school children and let them look through my binoculars and my scope and everything. They were able to really kind of share that experience along with me.
AD: Did they understand the significance?
CC: Not at first, but we were able to kind of convey that to them. I think there were so many other birders there who were as excited to see it as I was. And the teachers were excited, and I think they used it as kind of a teachable moment, which is great.
AD: How much work goes into preparing this report?
CC: Quite a bit of work, and it's certainly not something I do alone. I have a lot of collaborators that assist me with that. I pulled data from a variety of sources, like the E Bird Community Science Platform, which is run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology out of Ithaca, NY. That's kind of become the gold standard for bird reports in the world really, also from I-Naturalist, which is another community science platform, more kind of broad scale, not just birds. Then there's some kind of social media pages directed at birders. So from there as well, and then word of mouth. There are some birders who are just not connected to some of the other channels and who will report things directly to me for inclusion in the summary.
AD: Why aren't there more people doing this?
CC: Alan Wormington was a phenomenal resource on birds in Ontario and Essex County and the Point Pelee area specifically and Allen's work was and remains one of the most incredible resources on birds that's available to birders. Alan unfortunately passed away in 2016, and in that time, from 2016 to my first iteration in 2022, it hadn't really been picked up. Alan's work was so incredible, such a phenomenal resource for us that I felt it was something that was important to kind of bring back. So I talked to some friends about it, and they were really encouraging to assist me in that and I began kind of compiling, trying to match the level of detail that Alan used to put into his work and allowing us to kind of make some more year-over-year comparisons across all the species that we get to see here in Essex County.
AD: Why is it important to have this record?
CC: I think it's really important to continue the work that Alan was doing …to be able to learn more about our birds, especially year over year. We're seeing population changes, whether that's increases due to successful conservation or decreases due to habitat loss. And something especially that's kind of public-leaning because a lot of these platforms, as science-oriented as they are, they're not necessarily super easy for the public to understand. I'm trying to break things down in a way that anybody can kind of digest and understand.
AD: Do we have any idea of how many people are into birding in Windsor-Essex?
CC: I think everybody's into birding to some degree, and I don't think it's fair to say that someone who looks at the birds on their backyard feeder isn't a birder. All of that data really matters. Sometimes, people find really interesting things at their backyard feeder. So we have a massive community, and if you're ever there during the Festival of Birds, it is just this phenomenal place. It gets a little hectic sometimes with people visiting from all over the world coming to our area ,specifically for the biodiversity that we host, so it's pretty impressive.
AD: How did you get involved?
CC: I grew up in LaSalle, not far from Ojibway Park, and that was really a huge thing for me. My parents really fostered a love of nature in me, but I took a lot of camps there with people like Tom Preney, Karen Cedar, Paul Pratt, who are phenomenal resources on the biodiversity of Essex County and really helped kind of foster that love of nature in me. Around the time of the pandemic, I found some peers similar in age to myself who kind of shared my passion and that's really what brought birding from a hobby to a passion for sure.
AD: Is Ojibway your favourite spot?
CC: Point Pelee remains my favourite location. I spend a lot of time there. I do work outside of the park as well at Pelee Wings Outfitters where I sell binoculars and spotting scopes, mostly to birders. So I spend a lot of time in the Leamington area, but I still love going to Ojibway, absolutely.
AD: What's left on your wish list?
CC: Not much. I'm very fortunate to have seen a lot in Essex County. There's a few species, things like Swainson's hawk and Chuck-will's-widow, these rare species that I've not yet encountered, but as for the regular species, I've been very fortunate to encounter nearly everything we can hope to see in the average year.
LISTEN | Cam Chevalier speaks with Amy Dodge:
With files from Windsor Morning