As I stood waiting for the crowds to turn up for our pre Swan and Goose count outing it suddenly dawned on me just a few minutes before 10am, that most people don’t like sunny warm Wednesdays watching birds, it was with this that 5 of us started out on our route. We had seen the Peregrine Falcon sitting high up over Barry’s house watching his feeder for him while he was away riding around.
Right off the bat I will say that we only saw 3 Mute Swans and less than 100 Canada Geese, but the rest of the beauties were a real treat.
First stop was down Drinkwater Road where we saw a group of Otters diving and playing out in the lake and a single Pied-billed Grebe, many Canadian Robins were feeding on the berries along the road and as we headed back to the vehicle a single Yellow-rumped Warbler worked the hedgerow.
It was then off up the highway to Quists Farm where a Red-tailed Hawk sat high up on the dead snag and a immature Northern Harrier coursed across the field, both an immature and adult Bald Eagle put in an appearance. The stars at this location was the numbers of Killdeer which were in a couple of the fields, just using my binoculars I counted just under 40 separate birds, they obviously like the sunny weather which shone over the farm.
We then worked our way around Richards Trail, but it was very slow for birds, but we did get another Red-tailed Hawk and a few sparrows.
Hwy 18 was next on the route and and another Red-tail and a adult Bald Eagle were added to our list, further along we had 3 Steller’s Jays, these hungry hippo’s have made a big influx into the valley this year and are eating me out of house and home at my feeders, good job Buckerfields have sunflower seeds on special this week.
At Drinkwater Road a large accipiter flew through the trees, my guess was a Coopers, but couldn’t be sure.
We had our usual break at A&W and one of our party just had to get some hot sweet smelling chicken which did upset me as my drooling caused a mess on my shirt.
Whether it was the smell of the chicken or what but our driver took it upon herself to bypass our route and go her own jolly way, but all was not lost as we doubled back around, only for her to go off the edge once again, this caused us to see our first of three Merlins for the day on Sahilton Road.
It then went slow again for our birds, but not our driver as she floored it and we were soon just off Lakeside Road for our next Merlin, this one caused mass panic for those who wanted to take photo’s as this little beauty sat up in the sun (picture thanks to Kurlene). The farmer was spreading some awful smelling liquid on his field and he was fast getting closer to my opened window, while the photohogs were still clicking, after much encouragement they got back in the vehicle and slid up the windows. Talking of hogs there were two little sweeties in this little pen complete with little pighouse to keep them dry (picture thanks to Zan).
Of course this was all hogwash to a hardened Swan and Goose counter like me, so we pressed on to Koksilah Road in hopes of seeing another Peregrine on it’s favorite dead snag only to be confronted with another Merlin sitting there instead, add to this my local Merlin who was sitting high up in a fir when i got home this made four for me on the day.
We did Cowichan Bay where we added in our Mute Swans and then down to the Dock Road where among the large number of gulls washing and brushing up were 2 Bonapart’s Gulls in winter plumage.
Back along Tzouhalem Road we had an adult Bald Eagle, this species will start to come back in big numbers over the next few weeks as the salmon start to run.
That was it our day was done, big thanks to Kurlene for keeping us safe on the roads and to Bob, Barry and Zan for their good company, if it was not for them this trip would have been just all birds.
Until the real thing on Wednesday November 4th keep eating the leftover Turkey
Derrick