The Short French Tyrant Bird

What's the rarest creature ever featured at Toronto Wildlife? Hm...difficult to say. Probably none of the wildllife in our index is actually endangered, so the question is maybe, what specimen are you least likely to see?

Possibly - though it is open to debate - this is your winner.

This is the Bonaparte's Gull. They aren't really named after Napolean, but rather his nephew, ornithologist Charles Lucien Bonaparte. They only have a black head during breeding season, while the rest of the year they look like most any other seagull at a quick glance. They are reasonably plentiful around the city, however you just don't catch them in black head configuration too often. At least I don't, and I was only able to snap a couple of quick shots of this customer before he was gone.

Be aware that these birds can be mistaken for the Common Tern, and vice versa.

Taken at Cranberry Marsh. Click to enlarge.

Baltimore Orioles

Another longtime quest of Toronto Wildlife has been to get a shot of a Baltimore Oriole and a (Toronto) Blue Jay side by side. Sadly, they don't seem to hang out that much, if ever. Spring is a good time to find these birds, because they love blossoms, apple blossoms especially. And, if you're wondering, the baseball team is named after the birds, not the other way around. The birds got the Baltimore moniker because their colours match Lord Baltimore's coat-of-arms.

In most previous years, I would also have thrown in some kind of dis of the baseball Orioles, except as of today they're leading the AL East. Grrr.

Click to enlarge.

Hawkeye

As we've briefly touched on before, identifying hawks in this part of the world can be tricky. This is especially true when trying to distinguish a Cooper's Hawk from a Sharp-shinned Hawk. In this case, the highly-credentialed Toronto Wildlife bird identification brain trust believes this to be a Sharp-shinned Hawk. Click to get a better look for yourself. A Red-tailed Hawk would only have the dark bars farther down on its belly.

There was also a debate as to whether this shot should be published at all since it was taken at the Kortright Conservation Centre in Woodbridge. But, really, if we've already decided that Whitby is in Toronto, then Woodbridge qualifies. If you've never been there, the Kortright is a great place to visit, though you should be prepared for lots of walking and you do have to pay for parking.

FERAL!!!

Somehow the title of this post doesn't come off as scary as I thought it would, nevertheless there really are feral animals all over Toronto. That is, formerly domesticated animals which have become wild once again.

The feral kitty above is part of a large colony of feral cats in Scarborough Bluffs Park. Like this intent hunter, they often seem to believe they've got a shot at catching one of the nearby Canada Geese. I've never seen them succeed, but they're alive so they much catch something.

At various times and places around the city I've also seen wild budgies and parakeets (which probably will not last long), rabbits that are so friendly they are almost certainly released animals, and such rare critters as a Eurasian Widgeon. These sometimes stray into North America from wild populations in Europe, however I would guess it's more likely that such a bird escaped from a private collection or sanctuary.

And more than once I've seen the Muscovy Duck below. These ducks are a fully-domesticated breed so this guy must have escaped from a farm where, obviously, he received several years of classical dance training and maybe one of tap.

Click to enlarge.