'**^'lI3RARY' 



THE OTTAWA NATURALIST W^ 



Vol. XXIV. OTTAWA, SEPTEMBER, 1907 No. 6 



THE SPRING MIGRATION ON THE BRUCE PENINSULA. 



. 



By a. B. Klugh, Kingston, Ont. 



It has appeared to me for some years that the Bruce 

 Peninsula, Ontario, should be a migration route for the birds 

 of the country lying north of Lake Huron. This year (1907) I 

 spent from April 27th to June 21st at the base of the peninsula 

 investigating the avifauna of that district. I made mv head- 

 quarters at the village of Colpoy's Bay, three miles above 

 Wiarton. From here I made frequent trips across the peninsula 

 which is, at its base, some seven miles wide. 



The east shore is fringed with limestone hiluffs some 160 

 to 2 50 feet in height, while the west shore is low and sandy. 



The avifauna is very similar all across the peninsula, the 

 only difference being that along the Pike River, near the middle 

 of the peninsula, there are marshes, and at Oliphant on the west 

 side there is a huge saiidy bog and in these localities the Mary- 

 land }'ellow-throat, swamp sparrow and alder flycatcher which 

 do not reside on the east coast, breed 



Just below the village of Colpoy's Bay, between the lime- 

 stone bluffs and the shore, is a bush some 1^ miles long bv about 

 100 yards wide in most places, consisting largely of cedar 

 {T. occidentalis), balsam (A. balsamea), white spruce (P. alba), 

 paper birch (B. papyrifera) and balsam poplar (P. balsamijera). 

 Into this bush all the birds travelling up the east shore seemed 

 to pitch. Above the village, between the bluffs and the shore, 

 the bush consists mostly of paper birch with some poplar 

 (P. tremuloides) and balsam poplar, and though this looked 

 to be good "bird -country" birds were comparatively scarce 

 here during migration. 



When I arrived on April 27th, only the early migrants had 

 yet arrived, viz. robin, blue-bird, song sparrow, bronzed 

 grackle, purple finch, red-winged blackbird, rusty blackbird, 

 slate-colored junco, flicker, prairie horned lark, hermit thrush, 

 white-throated sparrow, fox sparrow, and vesper sparrow. 



On the night of April 29th and the morning of the 30th, a 

 foot of snow fell. This drove a host of birds into our barnyard 

 to seek for food. In the barnyard and in cedars about the house 

 were some 200 juncos, 150 fox sparrows, 100 white-throats, 50 

 song sparrows, many robins, several bluebirds, tree sparrows 

 and prairie horned larks and a hermit thrush. Many of the 

 juncos were in the barn and some even in the woodshed. 



