Hi
This week saw a major drop in swan numbers with just 440 birds being found, where the others were hiding, who knows. We did manage to find two Tundra’s one of which was the neck banded P927 which incidentally thanks to Peggy Smith was seen in Forest Grove OR in January 2010 and in Ridgefield WA in November 2011, thanks Peggy good info. Just shows you how these birds move around the west coast.
Four participants this week, that’s a increase of 100% from last week and big thanks to Kurlene for driving us around in good time.
Eagle numbers were down but Red-tailed Hawks jumped back up again and it is noteworthy how many of the red-tails were in the exact same location as previous weeks. A juvenile Coopers Hawk brought us too a standstill on Francis Street just down from the fisheries building. All in all low numbers for raptors.
Good numbers of Ruddy Ducks were on Somenos Lake and a male Eurasian Wigeon took a lot of finding on Corfield Road.
The weather held off for most of the count which was a good thing as Daryl and Bob who went awol on Koksilah Road west while looking for swans and we had to turn the vehicle around and go look for them, but they did find just under 60 swans at this location.
Many swans were flying around this time and it was hard to know if we had counted them before or not, but we stuck to our rules of not counting birds that were headed into an area that we had not counted yet. Only birds that headed into a previous counted area were added.
The day ended in the rain at Cowichan Bay and it was here that we had our best sighting of the day on the Dock Road, I was counting swans on the far side when Kurlene spotted some shorebirds flying in, it took a while before they showed their heads up out of a dip, but when they did it was 4 Dunlin a common winter migrant, but a hard species to find in the Bay due to all the the little muddy spots spread out over a vast area. They do sometimes sit out on the log booms and if you had a boat close inspection could be had.
Well that was it another count finished and with the last few in sight it will mean another years successful swan and goose hunt under our belt.
Once 5 years have been achieved we can then start making some sense of what we have here in the valley.
Until we meet again
Keep your chin up and a smile on your face.
Derrick