The Binocular Site
Prince Edward County, Ontario
Prince Edward County is found on Quinte’s Isle, and is located below Belleville, within an hour’s drive of Kingston. Here history and culture are present on every corner, offering a uniquely rustic and honest beauty away from big city life.
Guided tours are often available, and the Prince Edward Point Bird Observatory conducts ongoing counts, birding programs, and guided hikes.
The annual birding festival is particularly well-known, with over a hundred visitors joining scheduled bird monitoring hikes and educational events each year. The area is uniquely positioned to draw a vast number and variety migrating birds, particularly on the southern shores during spring migration. More than 337 bird species have been spotted along wetlands, woods, small and large lakes, limestone ledges, open fields, and rocky shorelines.
Originally Quinte’s Isle was a peninsula, but became an island in 1889 when the Murray Canal was constructed. Still, mainland can be accessed over three highway bridges, one railway bridge, and a ferry.
Once designed by the movement of glaciers, Prince Edward County still reveals the Lake-On-The-Mountain, with a water level 150 feet above that of Lake Ontario, despite that their shorelines are horizontally within a few feet of eachother. This lake remains very deep, at 110 feet, and how it retains its water and from where the water feeds is still a mystery. See the Prince Edward County website for more information.
The provincial bird of Ontario is the Common Loon and you can find a checklist for birding activities in Ontario here.
Photo credit to Nekonexus, used with permission under the creative commons license.
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