This week I was once again surrounded by women, I don’t know how I do it, but there you are, some of us have it and some don’t. Four of us took off from the dog park and it was not long before the numbers started to grow.
Goose numbers this week dropped drastically and swans went up although immatures remained low. We only had one Cackling Goose in amongst some cousins on Dinsdales Farm. We never could find a Mute Swan this week but I have it on good authority that a flock has been seen in Mill Bay so maybe they headed south for some better weather.
Corfield and Sahilton Roads had the bigger numbers of swans along with Koksilah Road west and the main areas for geese were Somenos Marsh and Dinsdales Farm Cowichan Bay.
The one good thing about our little group is that if we ever found a rare bird we would have the book on hand to look it up. The vehicle comes equipped with so many bird books it is known as Amazon 2. One book which caught my eye this week was a great book on Birds of Prey by Crossley, a wonderfully illustrated book showing birds perched and flying and in all sorts of plumage. Here is a link to the book in question :
Although this week our raptor numbers suffered a bit with the star being a Peregrine Falcon on Koksilah Road east.
We managed to get around on dark chocolate and arrowroot bickies this week brought to us by our long lost friend Daryl who had been awol for far too long.
As one can imagine their was lot’s of chatter this week ranging on many subjects, one was religion which in its written works lies many articles on birds, but I have never found the bible of much use for identification purposes.
Over off Koksilah Road east we found some swans way over the back field and so we had to go around onto George Street to get a better look, some of us squeezed our bodies through this tiny hole in the fence and straight away I noticed this swan with a great deal of yellow on it’s bill, the only trouble was the shape of the bill and swan all pointed to it being a Trumpeter, anyways Kurlene got us a nice picture which we can keep on record should we ever come across this bird again.
Also of note was that Kurlene while out on Thursday caught sight and photographed the neck banded swan UK01, we had heard from Peggy that it was seen a couple of weeks ago, but we have not had any luck finding it on the count. I think this is the fourth year for this bird in the valley. It’s band is starting to fade in color fast and might not be identifiable after this year.
Anyways a short report this week as the police have arrived, it appears that some of my comments about the new police station have not gone down well, so if I don’t turn up for the count next week, you know where Ill be, just put the tally sheet under cell door 1.
Have fun and keep looking up.
Derrick