Simple Facts About Toronto’s Waterbirds

Canada Goose
This bird flies in large V-shaped flocks when migrating, and can travel more than 1 000 km in one day. Canada Geese nest in the same area where its parents nested and often uses the same nest every year, making them an easy target for managed culling operations. This bird mates for life, but if one member of the pair dies, the other will take another mate.

Goslings begin communicating with their parents while still in the egg. Their calls are limited to greeting “peeps,” distress calls, and high-pitched trills signalling contentment. Goslings respond in different ways to different adult calls, indicating that the adults use a variety of calls with a range of meanings to communicate with their young.

Ring-billed Gulls
Like most other gulls and terns, Ring-billed Gulls nest in colonies. They are social birds requiring only a small territory, but their colonies usually contain hundreds or, more often, thousands of pairs. The minimum size of long-established gulleries is 500 to 1 000 pairs. The maximum size varies geographically: in the west, the
largest colonies are 8 000 to 10 000 pairs and in the east, they are more than double that at 20 000 to 30 000 pairs. The Leslie Street Spit is home to 30 000 Ring-billed Gulls.

Young Ring-billed Gulls are a mottled brown, much different in colouring from the adults. With each successive moult, or shedding of old feathers, they lose more of the brown and develop more of the white, grey, and black patterning. They attain full adult plumage when they are three years old.

Double-crested Cormorants
Double-crested cormorants are dramatic, large aquatic birds with shiny black and bronze plumage. They don't have waterproof feathers like most aquatic birds and need to perch on rocks, sandbars, pilings, wires, trees or docks to dry off.

During the breeding season, cormorants are monogamous and live in large, social colonies - the largest colony on the Great Lakes is found at the Leslie Street Spit. Cormorant couples work together to raise their young, from building a nest and incubating the eggs to feeding chicks once they have hatched.

Common Tern
The Common tern nests on sandy, gravelly or rocky beaches. It has as a preference for small fish and is known for its acrobatic agility in the air.

A tern nest is very simple and very difficult to spot, as are the eggs which look like pebbles. The nests are scattered everywhere, from the upper part of the dune to the water's edge.

Terns make loud sounds when their colony is approached. They take off in great numbers and tend to fly low over people. If you notice that terns are attacking you, leave the area, you must be approaching their nests.

Black-crowned Night Herons
With a range that spans five continents, including much of North America, the Black-crowned Night-Heron is the most widespread heron in the world. It is most active at dusk and at night, feeding in the same areas that other heron species frequent during the day.

The Black-crowned Night-Heron may nest in the same tree with ibises, or other herons. The largest colony of Black-crowned Night Herons in Canada – over a thousand pairs - is found at the Leslie Street Spit nesting alongside Double-crested Cormorants.