If you’re in Toronto and looking to take in nature amid a more recent return to seasonal winter temperatures, birdwatching enthusiasts at Tommy Thompson Park say there’s a rare chance to see a duck typically found in Canada’s Arctic and along the Atlantic Ocean.
Jack Alvo, an eight-year volunteer at Tommy Thompson Park who has been birdwatching for nearly four decades, was among those who photographed the king eider duck.
“It’s just one of the most beautiful ducks I’ve ever, ever seen,” he told CityNews.
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“The most interesting reaction is when I’ve shared it with people who are not birders and they just say, ‘Wow, how can I see that bird?’ And among birders … they’ve been flocking down here to see this bird.”
Alvo said he saw the king eider duck near peninsulas A and B, which he estimated to be around a four-kilometre walk from the park’s northern entrance at the bottom of Leslie Street.
He and others speculated this might be the duck’s second winter in Toronto.
“It was an immature plumage, so it was cool. But when it showed up this year almost in adult plumage, we were just stunned,” gorgeous,” Alvo said.
Shane Abernethy, the bander in charge of the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA)’s Tommy Thompson Park Bird Research Station, recently highlighted the discovery on social media.
“They’re a very pretty, very showy duck that usually breeds up in the very, very high Arctic and they’re unusual to spot here because they’re an oceanic one,” he told CityNews.
“They’re officially a rarity. This is out of the expected range for them. But there’s usually one or two out of tens of thousands of ducks that utilize the Great Lakes every single winter that show up somewhere on the Toronto lakefront.”
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It’s not exactly clear how the duck seen at Tommy Thompson Park ended up in Toronto, but Abernethy described how the city is in a prime location.
“Toronto is a bit of a slept-on birding destination because of the way the Great Lakes are set up, we’re at the confluence of two of the four major migratory flyways in North America,” he said.
“It’s a little-known fact that tens of millions of migratory birds pass through and over Toronto every single year, most of which are completely unnoticed because they migrate nocturnally.”
When it comes to the park itself, experts said it offers the right kind of respite for king eiders and other migrating birds thanks to ecological restoration and preservation efforts.
“Birds don’t like flying over open water, so they congregate on peninsulas and they rely very heavily on stopover habitat to build up the fat reserves they need to continue their journey. If, when birds are arriving here, they’re very often running quite literally on fumes and have pushed themselves near physiological limits,” he said.
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“It’s entirely possible that one or two, if they’re running short on fumes … would see this very, very wide expanse of open water full of very easily forageable mussels.”
“It’s fantastic (compared to other birding locations) because it’s on the lake and because it has a variety of habitats. Over the course of the years, more species of birds have been seen here than anywhere in Toronto,” Alvo added.
While spring and fall migration periods are the peak times to see birds at Tommy Thompson, Abernethy encouraged anyone curious about the king eider duck to visit soon.
“By the time a lot of this ice recedes, it’ll probably already be preparing to, if not, have already started migrating back north to the Arctic. The breeding season starts a lot earlier than most expect, so spring migration is a mad dash where a lot of our departures are occurring in February and even March,” he said.