A few years ago, several of my birding colleagues pointed out to me that my Birds of the Kingston Region (1989) was out of date as a result of the plethora of studies conducted by members of the Kingston Field Naturalists (KFN) and also by other groups and individuals. These field studies have produced more than an estimated 500,000 new records since 1988, which was the cut off date for that book. These fellow birders continually reminded me about the need to write a new edition. Once my term as the Dean of Graduate Studies and Research at the university concluded and I stepped back into the role of a normal professor, I started to think about a new edition. I decided that the project was worthwhile to document thoroughly the current status of bird life in our region. The next step was to meet with the Executive of the KFN to determine if it would like to publish this new edition, as it had done for the earlier book in 1989 with identical arrangements. Everyone associated with producing that edition did so without remuneration and all funds earned from sales went to the KFN for its work in conservation. The KFN Executive agreed and the ad hoc ‘book committee’ was formed with members Erwin Batalla, Elaine Farragher, Peter Good and me.
At the outset of 2006, I started to recalculate the average arrival and departure dates for all the species known to occur in our region. This was done by hand from the 18,000 species cards, (each with up to 40 entries of occurrence of the species with date, location and names of observers for a total of about 720,000 entries), since the KFN records are not stored in a computer file. The nest records, banding data, marsh studies, Breeding Bird Survey results, Christmas counts, waterfowl surveys among others are all stored in separate databases, separate from the species cards, none of which is computerized. By autumn 2006, the calculations and data assembly were complete and I began writing the species accounts during weekends and evenings. During this period when dealing with the accounts for the nesting cormorants, gulls and terns in our area, I became more aware of our incomplete information on these species due to the inaccessibility of the nesting colonies on the islands offshore from Kingston. I contacted Dr. D.V. (Chip) Weseloh of the Canadian Wildlife Service, who agreed to contribute an appendix in which he would describe the current status of the colonial water-birds of the Kingston region to include information from the offshore islands, information not published before.
The preparation of a book of this magnitude depends upon many contributors. Without the extensive high quality data gathered by members of the KFN since 1948, this book could never have been written. Many of the individuals who contributed records over the past 60 years are acknowledged within the species accounts where their records are used. To all of them, I am in their debt. The time-consuming task of collating the individual records of the KFN for the species card file as the records were gathered has been done out of a labour of love by the late George M. Stirrett from 1948-57, the late Helen Quilliam 1958-68, the late Betty Hughes 1969-86, Joel Ellis 1987-2000, and Peter Good 2001 to date.
Data from surveys of waterfowl and of the colonial nesting species by staff of the Canadian Wildlife Service have been made available to me and for these I thank Ken Ross, Hans Blokpoel, Iola M. Price, Gaston D. Tessier, and D.V. Chip Weseloh. Unpublished data from various bird releases by the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources have also been kindly made available to me and I thank E. Deshene, H. Lumsden, and T. Norris. From the Loggerhead Shrike Recovery programme, C. Grooms and K. Hennige have provided helpful information and I thank them. David Okines and Eric Machell of the Prince Edward Point Bird Observatory have shared banding results for which I am grateful. I appreciate the help by Terry Sprague who provided access to records from parts of Prince Edward County that lie within the Kingston region. Members of the North Leeds Bird Club also provided records freely for which I thank them.
Staff at the National Museum of Natural Sciences, Ottawa, have been most helpful in supplying catalogue numbers of thousands of birds from the kills at the chimneys of the Lennox Generating station, Bath, Ontario, and by allowing me to examine skins in the museum’s collection. I am grateful to the late W. Earl Godfrey, Henri Ouellet, the late Violet Humphreys, Richard Poulin, Michel Gosselin and Bruce DiLabio. I thank staff at the Lennox Generating Station for allowing me access to the productive undisturbed marsh on their property to gather nesting information.
I thank colleagues in the KFN for their help in producing this volume. The KFN is providing the financial support to publish the tome and I thank this environmental organisation for its support with its sterling reputation in the Kingston community. The Rare Birds Committee of the KFN has provided valuable help with its prompt and expeditious processing of reports and photographs submitted for assessment. Thanks are due my many birding companions for their stalwart support over 35 years. This support includes the hard work that led to setting up the PEPt National Wildlife Area as a result of our nocturnal migrant owl banding project that continued nightly during September to early November for more than ten years and the diurnal migrant songbird banding and census work there over ten years. The support extends to the waterfowl, raptor and shorebird surveys on Amherst I. that resulted in the KFN purchase of the large tract for conservation of habitat at the east end of the island, the songbird nesting censuses, the nocturnal mapping of owl and Whip-poor-will territories. Marnie Matthews was a stalwart supporter and bander of waterfowl on Amherst I and I thank her. I owe special thanks to Joel Ellis, who has been my faithful recorder on over 50 roadside Breeding Bird Surveys and over 15 surveys for the Red-shouldered Hawk and woodpeckers. Together, Joel and I have made over 300 visits to Prince Edward Point, Amherst and Wolfe Islands to census migrant birds. I also owe a special thanks to George Vance, who has been my stalwart companion on many all night studies to map owl, Common Nighthawk and Whip-poor–will territories and, on the Kingston Christmas count over many years in the more remote, hazardous, but productive, SW sector on Wolfe Island, and a special thanks to Mike Evans, a patient and outstanding teacher who always helped with the many projects.
Kenneth Edwards, Chris Grooms, Kurt Hennige, Paul Mackenzie, Bud Rowe and Simon Smith kindly opened their photographic collections to me for selection of pictures. The decision was made early in the process to exclude photographs of birds within the text in order to keep the costs of the book as low as possible, since there are so many books available with superb photographs of birds. With the text itself, I benefited from the wise counsel of Kenneth Edwards, Martin H. Edwards, and Joel Ellis. Helpful discussions about content were also had with Robert (Bob) Stewart just prior to his death in 2006, with Erwin Batalla, Paul Mackenzie, Bud Rowe, and D.V. (Chip) Weseloh. To the sharp eyes of Barbara Canton, Kenneth Edwards, Martin H. Edwards, Joel Ellis, and Barbara Weir, I owe thanks for their careful proofreading. However, in the end, errors of fact and surviving inconsistencies are mine for which I take responsibility.
Finally, I owe a debt to Barb, my patient and understanding wife. An excellent birder, she has been my companion during much of the field work over the years. She endured a major disruption of our very busy life during the past three years of writing this manuscript. Thank you.
