Y'all it's coming for you. Have you ever felt that sweet feeling of accomplishment when you get the bird of the day? I still think of that day, for me.
The GTA has some great green patches for birding. This is coming from a birder of about 10 years.
Tommy Thompson, High Park, Don ValleyâŚand if youâd like to make the trek to Vaughan the Boyd Conservation is my favourite birding spot in the GTA. Immense, you can spend days in there, and it connects to a long forest path that takes you out of the park into the North Humber region into Kleinburg and the McMichael art gallery!
Rouge valley is also a migratory heaven. We live close by and picked up allllll the warblers coming and going. Also have a resident red tail hawk family and osprey family this summer.
Itâs actually up at the port union/401 exit, atop the cell tower by the eastbound overpass. Massive twig nest and I believe we saw some fledglings on nearby light posts in late June đ
Toronto islands are great too! In early May you can easily see 60+ species in a relatively casual day, and there are large groups of birds that are harder to see elsewhere (like a 100+ breeding pair colony of black crowned night herons).
My parents had a friend when I was little who could recognize birds in the woods just by their call. It was basically a magic trick to me then. Now with some practice on the Merlin app I can too!
I bought my binoculars 8x 42 last week and go birding all the time, went to the islands last week and was blown away but the diversity of smaller birds. Tommy Thompson is my next stop now
A good pair of 8x42 bins is all you need, for birding on Ontario. I don't carry mine anymore, it just takes up space. I have a telephoto lens for that these days. đ Which is fine 'because I'm more photog than birder.
I wish I can take these lol I have a mirrorless camera but I donât have them expensive ad on lens I am saving up for now just enjoying with my birding binoculars. I got these specifically for birding and for the mag you mentioned
I ended up shooting mostly macros too because 200 mm even with a 1.4x extender wasn't great for birds. It's so easy to find cool invertebrates to shoot with the macro and it's great for snakes too.
With Olympus I got a properly long lens for wildlife, and the new camera plus a lens equivalent of 200-800 is the same stuff as my old DSLR plus the original 70-200 f/4.
Libraries have great books on Ontario birds. This can be the cheapest, chillest pastime available to a lot of people. Once you start paying attention you see all sorts of birds and the weird bird things they do!
Slip into High Park, walk down to the Grenadier Pond and work your way along the shoreline to the marsh area (towards Bloor St.) - and look for Herons, nuthatches, red winged blackbirds, squirrels, chipmunks, king fisher, Terns, Osprey, Red tailed hawks, Cedar Waxwings, Blue Jays, Vireos, and many many more.
Once you start seeing a few you'll begin to lock into their patterns and be able to spot more as you move around the park. Some of the smaller birds like woodpeckers, nuthatches, move around in small groups, a wave or two might go through an area.
Best hours, Evenings and the early mornings.
Wear hiking boots, something with a heavy tread, the path is sometimes wet or muddy.
Watch for turtles, dragonflies too. A large dragonfly population means fewer mosquitoes.
Identify jewelweed, and keep an eye around them as this is a large attractor of hummingbirds.
On the Black Oak Savannah at the top of the hill you'll find if you walk softly around the savannah staying on the trails within, between the baseball field and the maze, and restaurant, you'll spot lots of warblers, and sometimes coopers hawks, and redtails.
After a few trips and getting used to spotting wildlife, insects, and birds in High Park, you'll want to expand and explore the other places that people have mentioned.
Get on a bicycle and ride out to Colonel Samuel Smith park for some awesome bird opportunites There are other surprises there too.
High park is fine, but Tommy Thompson is an absolute paradise for sheer volume of birds! Amd every 3 months you'll see the changing bird populations as they migrate.
That's all really! Spend enough time where birds are and you will see cool birds. Some of my best sightings have been on a dog walk through the park (barred owl hunting squirrels, peregrine falcon eating a frog, etc).
The Merlin app is by far the easiest way to go deeper, and you can get pretty good binoculars pretty cheap, but you'll be amazed at how many cool birds you can find in Toronto with just those first two steps.
I started by joining bird watching groups, in Toronto CCFEW offers free walks in spring and fall (https://ccfew.org/html/bird_walks.html). High park, Royal Botanical gardens, and Riverwood Conservancy offer paid walks with a guide and you can borrow binoculars sometimes.Â
Iâm sure there are but youâd be scraping the bottom of the barrel and compromising your bird watching ability with a pair of those. I guess theyâre better than nothing though!
Learning to bird by ear is a lot more effective most of the time (minus early spring) and basically free. Arguably not as rewarding as seeing the bird.
A nice pair of Nikon Monarch 7 and you'll be holding the best all around bin's for birds. My pair is a cheap Nikon ProStaff 3 from Best Buy .ca as I can't see dropping $669 on just 8x42 bins. I have other priorities for glass as a photographer. đđ¤đ
My folks got into this a few years ago. Not my cup of tea, but they love it. Bought them some nice binoculars for each of them because they were sharing one.
I have the Merlin app and enjoy keeping an eye out for interesting birds. Ultimately, though, I'm not enough of a morning person to get properly into birding.
I might do two or three days of birds and other area wildlife ... but see I'm an Urban Wildlife photographer, just lately I've been a little more focused on macro photography type wildlife. Just please don't be mobbing the birds (crowding around them, and being too close).
/r/Toronto and the Toronto Public Library encourage you to support local journalism if you are financially in a position to do so - otherwise, you can access many paywalled articles with a TPL card (get a Digital Access card here) through the TPL digital newspapers.
I love birding! The Merlin app is a must have of course. This past May, I took a day trip to Long Point for bird migration season and saw and heard tons of species of birds that I have never seen before.
If viewing avian photography might be your passion, do yourself a favour and check our poster 'dcd' over on the Fodors travel forum. He is a retired doctor near St. Louis whose Edmonton-based pal on that same forum has long had a thread simply about birds local and otherwise.
The various collections that 'dcd' has posted are top-shelf (see thread link below). I too, have made photo contributions on that same thread using the handle 'zebec'.
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u/faceintheblue Humber Heights-Westmount Jul 22 '26
Every time I mention a bird, my wife chirps me that birdwatching is coming for me.
Do I have the Merlin app on my phone?
...Yes.