A Day Out in the County, Sandbanks Provincial Park & Kaiser Crossroads, Prince Edward County, Ontario

With the afternoon off, Ketha had agreed to take me on the tour of the county and finally I could see Sandbanks, a well known Provincial Park on the north western end of the county and also visit a couple of the vineyards.

Sandbanks Provincial Park

False Solomon's Seal, Maianthemum stellata

With the temperatures soaring and the sky being largely cloudless we thought we couldn't have picked a better day. We weren't quite right as the the lake soon became shrouded in a thick fog. Sandbanks can be found on the edge of Lake Ontario, it became a park in the 70's  and contains world's largest freshwater sand bar and dune system. Historically the site was cleared for pasture in the mid-1850's with cattle predominately grazing the dune system, causing the dunes to become mobile and destabilised and burying everything in its path. efforts to stabilise them have been ongoing since 1911.

Another current problem was the lake...which was at its highest level in 100 years causing there to be no beach (although Ketha assured me there normally is). Off shore there were large flocks of Ring-Billed Gulls Larus delawarensis and a few Bonaparte's Gulls Chroicocephalus philadelphia but very little else. The dune system's flora consisted largely of American Beach Grass Ammophilla breviligulata which helps to stabilise the dune system, amongst the grass False Solomon's Seal Maianthemum stellata, an attractive plant with small star shaped flowers. Sand Cherry Prunus pumila was one of the few shrubs in flower and could be found along most of the shore. Close to the car park the invasive non-native Greater Celendine Chelidonium majus could be found.

Sand Cherry, Prunus pumila

After leaving Sandbanks and quickly visiting Black Prince and getting a bottle of Mary Jane's Magical Hemp Wine and visiting the cooper next door who had visited the observatory in the fall we made our way to Kaiser Crossroad, a well known local birding spot.

Although not much to look at, a series of maize fields with flooded depressions, its an amazing place for birds and seems to draw in large numbers of shorebirds, gulls and terns. A few days before the place was heaving with shorebirds but it was pretty quiet apart from large numbers of Ring-Billed Gulls and a few Caspian Terns Hydroprogne caspia but there was one wader present and it was a good one, a Marbled Godwit Limosa fedoa, a good bird for the county and a lifer for me. It soon became very clear why there was very little about when a large female Peregrine came over doing a sorty, causing the godwit to lift giving me ever better views of all its distinguishing features.

Marbled Godwit, Limosa fedoa and two
Ring-Billed Gulls, Larus delawarensis

All in all not a bad afternoon away from the Obs!