By Cameron Chevalier

2022 was my second year of participating in the Holiday Beach Christmas Bird Count, and this time I birded with Mike and Steve McAllister (our friend Harrison Priebe was unfortunately prevented from joining us by the major storm that hit around that time). Having had a pretty slow morning at other hotspots in our count area, we entered Memorial Forest from County Road 50. Harrison had introduced me to this hotspot over two years prior, and it has yielded us many great birds since then (Northern Goshawk, Hudsonian Godwit, Dickcissel, and Acadian Flycatcher to name a few). Mike went off to search a few trees for owls, and just as he returned I remarked that at Memorial we would at least add a chickadee to our list. Moments later, a calling chickadee flew across the path and landed five meters ahead of us just off trail, at head height. Mike responded to my comment by pointing out the bird, and we all easily dismissed it as a familiar Black-capped Chickadee until I decided to use my binoculars. I was shocked to see a clear Boreal Chickadee, with its brown cap, dark gray-brown back and nape, and bright rusty flanks, and called it out frantically. I had studied the species wanting to add it to my life list for a while, so my identification was immediate. With the suggestion of southward movement earlier in the fall, Boreal Chickadee had been on the radar of Essex birders in 2022, but by the end of the year it seemed hopeless. Mike and Steve assumed I was kidding until they looked as well and we collectively freaked out! I was so excited that I didn’t take any photos and instead focused on sharing our find, hoping to get as many people out as possible for this incredible record. Over the next several weeks, many other birders arrived and got great looks and photos, and the bird became somewhat of a local celebrity. It persists at the same location at the time of writing.

While a relative outlier in recent years both regionally and for Southwestern Ontario as a whole, this is not the first Boreal Chickadee record for Essex. There are approximately 12 previous records, with the most recent coming 17 years ago during Alan Wormington’s record-breaking Point Pelee Birding Area Big Year in 2005 (though a possible record from Holiday Beach during the irruption year in 2010 exists). Surprisingly, the present record constitutes the first time the species was recorded in Essex in the month of December, and the species has now been recorded in the county in seven different months (November to May)!

For me, finding this bird with Mike and Steve during the Holiday Beach Christmas Bird Count goes to show what CBCs and birding throughout the year (even in the winter months) are all about: simply getting out to see what species may be around. In my experience there is always something interesting, and in this case, the Boreal Chickadee served as an excellent final addition to a remarkable year of birding in Essex in 2022.