Tag: nature

When you got nothing to say, a funny bird picture might suffice…

It’s summer proper now, fall migrations are weeks away and I’m not seeing as many birds as I’d like. Summer’s the problem. Most aren’t singing, so harder to spot in heavy foliage. They’re rearing young – busy. Ah well. I make another trip to Martindale to search for the Bullock’s Orioles I missed when the tree service people showed up on site a week or so ago. They’re supposed to have fledglings now. The Orioles, not the tree service people. I do hear a Bullock-type chortle in the cottonwoods, see Robins and Waxwings briefly but spot no pretty Orioles. Not my day, I guess.

With no birding adventures to report and no new birds recorded, I got nothing. Going through my photos, I find shots of a Red-crested Cardinal from Maui that I found funny at the time. The bird even looked slightly embarrassed, as if I’d happened on him in the middle of some private and exclusive exercises. He shot me a look of reluctant approbation and carried on. I make a quick search for birds that surprised me, made me smile. Mostly, the experience was too fleeting and I too slow with my camera. Still…

 

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Red-crested Cardinal – Yoga

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Slaty-backed Gull – Washington – No Pictures, Please!

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Anna’s Hummingbird – Victoria – Pilates

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Raven – Observatory Hill, Victoria – So relaxed!

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I’Iwi – Maui, Hosmer Grove – Coming Right At you!

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Wrentit – California – Yes, I’m only two inches tall. Want to make something out if it!

 

Flycatchers, Nutcrackers and Bighorn Sheep

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Down into the Valley of the Similkameen

I’m crossing the Coast Range and then following the Similkameen River down into the Okanagan. It’s not far – a few hundred miles – but the birds are different on the other side of the mountains. I make a quick stop at Manning Park Lodge where the temperature is five degrees Celsius and a dozen or more grey and black Clark’s Nutcrackers search the picnic area for leftovers. Engaging birds these. Columbian Ground Squirrels hustle around too – beautiful little creatures with their tiger belly stripes. If I wasn’t in a sort of a hurry, I’d go up to the alpine meadows to look for more high country birds and animals. Next time.

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Clark’s Nutcracker

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Columbian Ground Squirrel

Back on the twisting, mountain road, I follow the rushing Similkameen to Princeton and then on to Osoyoos. The town is at the northern tip of the great Sonoran Desert – and it’s wine country. It’s twenty-five degrees now – much more like June than it was on the coast. I pass towering Vaseaux Cliffs and make a stop, hoping for a pink, black and green Lewis’s Woodpecker, White-throated Swifts and maybe a Rock Wren or two. I hear the Lewis’s and two Rock Wrens, plus a Canyon Wren. A California Quail hops up on a post, sees me, and makes himself scarce. The Swifts are here but almost impossible to photograph, flying, reputedly, at up to 200 miles per hour!

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California Quail

Something bawls, cow-like, on the cliff face high above. A Bighorn ewe looking for something, her lamb maybe. She’s not  lost, and not trapped. While I watch she drops out of sight momentarily. Heart-stopping. But there she is, twenty feet or more down, secure on a barely discernible ledge. I keep half an eye on her. I’m curious and sympathetic. Finally, my birds recorded and the sun moving towards the horizon, I’m ready to find my motel. I watch the ewe for a few more minutes and then leave her to her search.

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Bighorn Ewe

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Bighorn Ewe – Halfway down (she’s there!)

Next morning, I’m up early, walking the dike along a canal crossed by Road 22. The morning is beautiful and birds are plentiful.  Black and white Bobolinks disappear into the long grass before I can take a picture. At least hidden five Sora Rails whinny in the marshy areas. Willow Flycatchers call – Fitz-bew – all along the dike. A Gray Catbird pops up to check me out and then flies away across the canal. Eastern Kingbirds and Western Wood Peewees are plentiful.

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Willow Flycatcher

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Western Wood Peewee

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Gray Catbird

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Eastern Kingbird

It’s time to take my leave. I’m only here for  few hours and I’ve got a long drive home. Out of curiosity more than anything else, I drive to Vaseaux, get out and search the cliff face. At first I don’t see anything but there she is, standing vigil on a spur of rock a thousand feet up. Is it the same animal as yesterday? I don’t know – Bighorn ewes all look the same to me. If it is the one from yesterday then there’s much more to these animals than I thought.

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Vigil – Bighorn Ewe

 

I forget what the second thing was…

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Broom and Roses

It’s one of those days when the birding gods decide to take a picnic – with some other birder. I set out this morning to locate birds at three different locations, and ended up being foiled, as Oilcan Harry says, at all three. The first two don’t matter much – traffic disruptions cancelled these out. The third should have been a piece of cake – Bullock’s Orioles at Martindale, from one to umpteen depending on whose report you read. Singing loudly too, so hard to miss. It’s a nice day-peaceful. I gear up. I’m ready for Orioles when, from out of the blue, two tree service trucks roar up. Out go the cones, out come the chain saws, and that’s all she wrote.

An hour later, for want of a better plan, I’m at the Munn Road power line. Not a bad fallback it turns out. The sun is out, the trail verges are thick with cad-yellow broom and Nootka Rose. In fact, the roses perfumes the air. And birds seem to be everywhere. I even discover the remains of an ancient civilization in the form of a mysterious trilith – like Stonehenge. You just have to unfocus your eyes!

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White-crowned Sparrow

 

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Downy Woodpecker

 

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Cedar Waxwing

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Nootka Rose

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Olive-sided Flycatcher

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Rufous Hummingbird

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Eastern Cottontail

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Mysterious Stonehenge-like Trilith

 

Road Trip

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Lazuli Bunting – W.L. Finley Refuge

Once a year I take my 86 Alfa Romeo on a birding trip, usually to Oregon. My route this year, down I-5, though the Willamette Valley, up the Oregon coast and then looping back to BC, takes me past some of the best birding spots in the northwest – Nisqually, Baskett Slough, W.L. Finley, Fern Ridge, George Reifel. The car is sparkling and bright at the start, dust covered and bug plastered when I ease her into the her parking bay at home. What lingers is the remembrance of the joy of motoring through incredibly beautiful countryside, top down, listening to snatches of bird song, alive to the smell of blossoms, new hay, and the medicinal aromas of conifers — and of the wonderful birds I saw and heard along the way.

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Bittern – Fern Ridge Refuge

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Sandhill Crane – George Reifel Refuge

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Black-headed Grosbeak –  W.L.Finley Refuge

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Spotted Towhee with Caterpillars

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Red-Breasted Sapsucker – W.L. Finley

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Live Moss – Fern Ridge

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Marsh Wren – Nisqually

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Alfa Bird – Oregon

 

 

 

 

In praise of Tyrants (flycatchers, that is)…

 

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Western Kingbird -Victoria, Canada

After a month or so of searching the shrubbery for warblers and adding to my extensive collection of photos of blurred foliage and bare branches, the visit of a rare Western Kingbird to our area is a welcome relief. I had to search for it but when I found the bird, it wasn’t hiding. I really do appreciate flycatchers for not hiding. It’s a selling point. I’d tell them so if I could. Mind you, after the warblers, I’d say that about any bird that favoured an unobstructed perch and sat still for a picture. Getting a half decent shot of the Western sent me back into my files looking for other shots of flycatchers-phoebes, peewees, and kingbirds, tyrants all. A varied family too, with around 400 members around the world, of which these are just a few…

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Eastern Kingbird – Ontario, Canada

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Vermilion Flycatcher – Texas

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Great Kiskadee – Mexico

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Say’s Phoebe – Arizona

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Scissor-tailed Flycatcher – Texas

Panama Flats

I like the name of this birding hotspot -Panama Flats. I’m surprised a blues artist hasn’t picked it up. And now, singing ‘How come my dog don’t bark when my best friend comes around?’ is the legendary Panama Flats! But I digress. This is a birding blog after all and the ‘Flats’ are, instead, a series of flooded fields that attract waterfowl and shorebirds in the spring and late fall. A very pleasant, quiet place to be on a warm May morning like this one.

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In a few months, the land will be dry, plowed possibly. Water birds that nest here, like Mallards and Canada Geese, have to getting cracking (sorry) early in the year. Today, dozens of ducklings and goslings are following their mums around, learning the ropes.

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Spotted Sandpiper

I’m here for a Pectoral Sandpiper, which I see briefly soon after arriving-on its way out, heading north I guess. Not so, the Spotted Sandpipers, actively displaying and chasing each other around the edges of the ponds, carried here and there by the staccato beats of their short wings. A Long-billed Dowitcher, stalking the perimeter surprises itself when it spots me, angling off into a swarm of young Mallards. I’m not fooled, not with that beak.

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Long-billed Dowitcher

I follow the dykes between the ponds, balancing on the planks and bits of scrap wood people have used to span the cross ditches. A Marsh Wren scolds me from the cattails, a complex series of chuckles and buzzes. Quite charming – if they did but know it.

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Marsh Wren

As the day warms, Barn Swallows appear, darting around after insects. A glossy Purple Martin crisscrosses the larger pond, the distinctive half flapping, half-gliding flight style an added giveaway. A Common Yellowthroat sings his ‘witchity, witchity, witchity’ nearby, looking handsome with his white forehead, black mask and lemon-yellow throat. Forget the blues. It’d be hard to write a good, downer song here, today.

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Common Yellowthroat

 

Powerline Birding

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The Olympics

Power lines are among the ugliest by-products of our electronic age but the ‘cut’ also provides wonderful habitat for birds, particularly flycatchers and warblers. I’m up on Goldstream Heights, picking my way over the rocks. Before long, I’m too focussed on the calls of birds to be aware of the huge metal towers looming nearby. A Song Sparrow chips a warning – I’m the topic certainly. As I stop to take in the view of the Olympics across the Strait of Georgia in Washington state, four Band-tailed Pigeons flash by overhead, streamlined, swift flyers like all pigeons. Below them, a tropically-coloured Western Tanager flashes yellow and red, landing briefly on a distant treetop. My mind is on flying birds. Suddenly a MacGillvary’s Warbler startles me with a blast of song. He pops into view, giving me some great looks. Lovely. Even with the towers and high-voltage lines, there are worse places to be than here on a mild May morning.

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MacGillvary’s Warbler

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Song Sparrow

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Powerline Trail

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Western Tanager

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Band-tailed Pigeon