GyrKite Birding Tours

08/01/2025

Our 2025 Hilliardton Overnight Tour date is set!
This 2.5 day adventure through boreal forest is one of our most popular tours, so make sure to book asap!

Hilliardton Marsh is a hidden gem located in the wilderness of the boreal forest in northern Ontario. September is a fantastic time to visit this area to witness the migration of hundreds of boreal breeding songbirds! We’ve also lined this trip up perfectly with the new moon of the lunar phase because we’re on the prowl for migrating owls! This tour includes a private night of owl banding with the Hilliardton Marsh Research and Education Centre, with banding and handling demonstrations led by Alessandra Kite. 🦉 If you’ve never seen owls up close, this is the perfect opportunity to learn about these fascinating creatures and be a part of important conservation and population research. We will also be searching for boreal specialties such as Boreal Owl, Black-backed Woodpecker, American Goshawk, White-winged Crossbill and Boreal Chickadee!

Check out our website for more info: https://www.gyrkitetours.com/service-page/hilliardton-marsh-overnight-tour

07/15/2025

New Blog Post!

Check out our latest blog update, focusing on some tips and tricks for birding in the summer months 😊☀️⛱️

By Kiah Jasper Outside, the piercing calls of cicadas echo through the forest canopy as the temperature steadily climbs past the mid twenties. In July birdsong is often quick to die down and only a few hours after sunrise the song of Red-eyed Vireos and cicadas are all that remains. Of course there....

07/14/2025

2026 TOUR SCHEDULE UPDATE

This week we’ve finally had some time to work on the website, after a very busy spring birding season and then an action packed early summer of atlassing for the Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas 🙂

While it’s still a work in progress with more tours on the way, we have updated our tours page on the website so show a lot of our upcoming 2026 trips!

We look forward to birding with you again soon 😊

https://www.gyrkitetours.com/trails

Below we’ve included some of Kiah’s photos from this past spring

06/26/2025

This male Summer Tanager was a nice highlight during one of our tours at Point Pelee National Park this past May. This species is a rare but regular “overshoot” in Ontario, showing up in small numbers each spring, particularly around Lake Erie. Summer Tanagers breed throughout the eastern US, coming as far north as southern Ohio. Occasionally spring migrants will fly too far North and end up in Ontario, which gives us a great chance to see this gorgeous species!

You never know what you’ll see when out birding : )

06/14/2025

Looking for a fun summer birding activity? Well look no further because in just a few weeks we’re heading to Carden Alvar! Carden is one of the final strongholds in Ontario for rare and specialized grassland species whose populations are declining drastically due to agricultural intensification and urban sprawl. This trip is the perfect opportunity to see such unique species and appreciate the beauty of pasture grasslands and meadows, habitats that have been undervalued by western ideology for centuries!

📸
1. Upland Sandpiper
2. American Black Bear
3. Carden Alvar landscape
4. Eastern Bluebird
5. American Goshawk

05/05/2025

Our recent tour on Pelee Island was a big success, with 130 species spotted across 3 days on the island! With a great group of people, spring migrants and the charming landscape of Pelee Island, what’s not to love?!

Some of the highlights included; Painted Bunting, Blue Grosbeak, Red-headed Woodpecker, American White Pelican and a large variety of different spring migrants🐤🐦

After another tour on the island we are back to Point Pelee National Park for more tours during the 2nd and 3rd weeks of May! See you there😃

📸 - Kiah Jasper
1) - Painted Bunting
2) - Blue Grosbeak
3) - Sanderling
4) - Baltimore Oriole
5) - Scarlet Tanager
6) - Eastern Kingbird
7) - Chestnut-sided Warbler
😎 - Red-headed Woodpecker
9-10) - Fish Point Landscape

04/09/2025

This spring we are excited to be returning to Pelee Island for another season of birding tours! The island hosts large numbers of migrating songbirds during spring migration, making it a great spot to get into birding. This season we are offering half day tours across the island and two hours hikes at Fish Point… which are are a great introduction to birding and the island☺️

More information on our website ⬇️

https://www.gyrkitetours.com/trails

04/02/2025

With May being just a month away, we are getting pretty excited about spring migration!

Experiencing May along the shoreline of Lake Erie is always one of the highlights of our year, and this season we’re thrilled to be offering a number of trips on Pelee Island as well as Point Pelee National Park😊

Our Point Pelee day trips will showcase some of our favourite areas in the park (as well as Hillman Marsh), and will likely have a species count approaching 100! Warblers, orioles, grosbeaks and shorebirds await!

03/21/2025

Thank you to everyone who participated in this contest! Out of a whopping 240 entries, congratulations to for winning 2 spots on one of our Point Pelee Group Tours! Please contact us at [email protected] to get booked!

🎊🎉🎊🎉🎊🎉🎊🎉🎊🎉🎊🎉🎊🎉🎊🎉🎊🎉🎊

We really appreciate everyone who participated in this contest so we would also like to offer 30% off of our Point Pelee Group Tours for every follower who participated in the contest! Please contact us via email or through our website if you are interested and we can book you with the discount.

We saw a lot of familiar names from previous tours and last years contest! We plan to continue this spring tradition as well as implement smaller contests for the summer season so stay tuned and good luck next time!😁🦅

03/12/2025

**Free Tour Giveaway!**

That’s right everyone, since last year was so popular, we are doing another free tour giveaway contest for two spots on a full day of adventuring around Point Pelee!

If you’re a beginner birder, our Point Pelee tours are the perfect way to dive right into learning about many species of migratory birds. If you’re a more experienced birding veteran we’ve also got you covered! Visiting Point Pelee in May is an excellent way to get ahead of the game on your year list, find rarities, and meet more people in the birding community!

To enter, all you have to do is follow our page and tag a friend in the comments. Each comment with a tag will count as an entry, and on March 20th we will randomly select a winner from the participants!

To see our 2025 selection of Point Pelee Tours please visit our website under “tours”
https://www.gyrkitetours.com/trails

Good Luck! 🦅✨

03/04/2025

Our trip to Algonquin Provincial Park is just under two weeks away, and we’re getting excited!
The White-winged Crossbill pictured here is just one of the many nomadic finch species we could find in the boreal. These are charismatic little creatures that travel all across Canada and the Northern States in search of cone crops to feed on. Crossbills are cone specialists, and their name sake allows them to pry open cones to reach the delicious seeds inside! Did you know that each individual’s bill can either be crossed to the right or left? Just like humans can be right or left handed 💪😊 What is really fascinating is that in White-winged Crossbills, right-crossed lower mandibles (like this individual) are three times more common than left-crossed!

02/26/2025

This past weekend we led a winter birding event for the Grey Sauble Conservation Authority. Everyone was so enthusiastic to learn about birding during the winter! Throughout the day we had countless discussions about birds and bird conservation, cleared up a few urban legends, recommend birding hotspots, optics, and birdseed, and made some DIY bird feeders to distribute on our hikes! We were also lucky enough to chance upon 4 different duck species along the stream towards Inglis falls: American Black Duck, Common Goldeneye, Common Merganser, and Mallard. Our day ended with a gorgeous Red-tailed Hawk that landed just on the edge of the property as we were closing the last hike!

📸 photos by Chelsea Vieira from Grey Sauble Conservation Authority