Leslie Spit Birding Station Day

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 Summer warmth returned for a day, so we went to find the birding station on the Spit. Volunteers and professionals catch and release birds, weighing, identifying, banding and timetabling their subjects. The capturing is done with fine nets stretched in the trees. Nets are checked every half hour.
Highlights of the rest of our ride:

• Views of the city beyond the beaches and parks
• Ham sandwiches enroute
• Natural greenery and wildflowers along paths
• Lots of yachts and sailboats in the whitecaps
• Getting a close up of the cormorant nests

Flocks of cormorants are thriving all up and down the Toronto lakeshore. Their nesting trees are visible from many East End vantage points, conspicuously bone white and dead. Cormorant poop kills the trees and the sun bleaches the limbs. Until I could zoom in on the branches with my camera, I thought that the whiteness of the trees owed to a paint job done in guano. Nope. Just sun-bleaching.