CANADA Point Pelee and Michigan, USA MAY 2002 TOUR NEWS Leader: Dave Milsom

Birdfinders' 2002 tour of Canada, Point Pelee and Michigan suffered from unseasonably cold and wet weather. But from every cloud there is a silver lining and the bird numbers and variety was incredible. We thought it was going to be hard to beat the 2001 total of 214 species but this year's total was an amazing 235 species! Many superlatives are used to describe the American wood warblers and tanagers and rightly so, but what superlative can you use to describe the 41 species seen on this year's tour, yes 41! If fact it should be 41+ because we also saw a Brewster's Warbler, a hybrid between Blue-winged and Golden-winged Warblers.

Unusual/unseasonal species seen included Townsend's Solitaire, American Tree and Harris's Sparrows, Lapland Longspur, Rusty Blackbird, Common Redpoll, Evening Grosbeak and Painted Bunting whilst speciality birds included Trumpeter Swan, Sharp-tailed Grouse, Gray Jay and Kirtland's Warbler. Even when achieving this record-breaking total Dave Milsom managed to record 12 species of mammals, 7 species of reptiles, 10 species of butterflies and numerous plants.