Great Northern Diver!...

...or Common Loon as it's known over here, was definitely the theme of todays Count. I was hoping that there might have been some waterbirds held up in the bay by the strong NW winds round the Point yesterday, and while duck spp were almost non-existent, i was very pleased to see no less than 93 Common Loons re-starting their migration after an enforced lay-off! Most of these were migrating quite high and taking a major short cut by flying over the harbour, cutting across the peninsula and completely missing Whitefish Point! They could have been easily missed but luckily they were spotted using this sneaky tactic by Chris; i kept a close watch on this route and would estimate that about 2/3 of the total number took this flight line.

Yesterday, Sat 17th produced snow showers early morning; the advice was not to try counting - i went to the Point for a look and yep, the advice was good, i couldn't see the lake! I waited round the gift shop for a while for the snow to stop and had 2 Purple Finch, RB & WB Nuthatch and the female Chaffinch again. No change in the weather so went to see if anything was sheltering in the harbour. On the way i decided to try for woodland grouse so picked a disused-looking forest track, and after a 15 minute walk had excellent close views of a male Spruce Grouse.
The weather cleared in the afternoon so i did the last 2 hours of the Count but waterfowl were very few, though a Snow Bunting perched on the roof of the shack and called away, obviously feeling a bit lonely!