Swan & Goose Count 23 Jan. 2013

Hi Birders
This week saw eight eager birders turn up for the count and although the Goose numbers were normal we seem to have lost a large proportion of our Swans. The Ruddy Ducks on Somenos Lake were gone, hopefully back to Quamichan Lake. The Hawks suffered this week with low numbers for Red-tails and adult Bald Eagles. The north end of our route was very dull with not much being added by our diligent counters. By the time we had reached our lunch break we had only counted just over sixty swans and 15 raptors.
Those egg salad sandwiches and the small room break must have worked wonders because at the end of Corfield Road we had one of the stars of the winter counting season with a Red-breasted Sapsucker at point blank range, sap sucking on some drill wells on the side of a maple. This dapper member of the woodpecker family gave excellent photo opportunities, one is attached to this report.
We then headed off to the west where we found a nice group of Bald Eagles on trees at Kelvin Creek, but alas no sign of the invisible Killdeer or the most elusive Wilson’s Snipe.
Riverside Road saw a major group of Canada Geese, but no swans. I had under estimated the number of geese but through the walkie-talkie the number was adjusted by the teller. Our one and only Red-tailed Hawk was seen on Bench Road as the rain got a little more intense.

Onwards to Dougan’s Flats where I commented on a group of Wigeon in a field I was quickly corrected that these were Mallards and was told in no uncertain terms to add this into my report. We continued round to Dougan’s Lake where a nice little flock of Trumpeter’s were had with 22 adults and 6 immature, this making for a good average.
It was here that I heard some tittle-tattle and giggling behind me on my mistake of identifying Wigeon for Mallards. Unbeknown to these counters who think that with chocolate biscuits they can get away with such unlady like behavior this was a test orchestrated by myself to see if those who were in our vehicle had learned anything over the years and weeks on my tuition about bird identification and I was glad to see that Dorothy had truly learned the art of duck species id. There will be other unsuspecting tests done over the next few weeks too see if the gigglers have learned anything.

Our quest for swans continued but the best we could do was 20 until we got to Koksilah Road east here we found over 60 Trumpeters and nearly 350 Geese among these were 18 Greater White-fronted Geese a new species I believe for some.
This was about it as we only added a few more swans along the Dock Road, oh and a nice adult Cooper’s Hawk which was admired by us in the pace car before it flew off before the others caught up with us.

That’s it until we meet again

Derrick

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