Look What Flew Through the County, The Birds of Prince Edward County

Written By Canadian Author

One Author’s Journey – Look What Flew Through The County

Yvonne Buys

I am super excited to have published my first book, Look What Flew Through The County, and would like to share with you my journey from ophthalmologist to birder to author.

In 2020, I retired from a 30-year career as an academic ophthalmologist at the University of Toronto and moved to Prince Edward County. In addition to a busy clinical practice specializing in glaucoma, I was also involved in teaching our future ophthalmologists and spent significant time in research where I published nearly 200 peer-reviewed articles in addition to many book chapters and made over 500 presentations globally. These skills I carry with me, as they say ’10,00 hours’.

As my life turned a new chapter, I became interested in birds. Not just because this was a common COVID hobby but primarily because Prince Edward County is a renowned birding hotspot. Did you know that in the fall, Prince Edward Point has the largest number of migrating Northern Saw-whet Owls compared to anywhere in North America? You might also be surprised to learn that in April 2000, 150,000 Long-tailed Ducks were spotted along the South Shore of the County, which represents 7.5% of the global population of this species.

As a retirement gift I received a camera for birding and after I had collected a number of good images, I decided to approach our local paper, the Wellington Times, and pitched the idea of a weekly column about birds entitled ‘Look What Flew through the County’. This was very well received with many residents and some visitors sending me images for my weekly publication.

To me the next natural segway was to produce a book of the birds in the County primarily using local photographs. Given my extensive experience in writing and formatting presentations I knew this was an attainable goal. Although my bird knowledge had grown exponentially, I wanted to bring in some experts to share their learnings. I approached our local bird expert, Terry Sprague, who was very excited by my concept and agreed to be a co-author on this project. Terry suggested I also reach out to David Bree, who was the Chief Park Naturalist at Presqu’ile Park for 15 years. David Bree also agreed to partner on this book.

Putting a call out to local photographers, I was able to collect stunning photographs for over 320 of the 364 birds on the Prince Edward County Checklist of Birds. Birds however do not adhere to geographic boundaries and these birds can also be found throughout southern Ontario. I do not view this book as a field guide. This is more of a coffee table book with amazing images and small vignettes providing a local birding perspective, to be enjoyed by bird lovers and naturalists alike. Did you know that the last documented Bald Eagle nest in the County was in 1947? That was until 2016 when this magnificent bird made a resurgence and to date there are reports of at least 6 breeding pairs.

The book is arranged in a unique way. Instead of organizing by taxonomy, it is divided into 6 chapters: Year-Round Residents, Summer Breeders, Migrants – Just Passing Through, Winter Visitors, Rarities and Vagrants. A challenge in birding is knowing what birds you can expect in a region/habitat and when you could expect to find them there. This book addresses both of these aspects while providing a local flavour and backstory. We also created a birding hotspot map of the County highlighting 15 locations and providing a brief description of the habitat and what one might expect to find there.

Hope you enjoy this book and happy birding!