” Today was hard to Swallow”
We dodged a real bullet today weather wise, with rain storms on both side of our first spring count, we had a dry run. 8 birders once again set out from the dog park and things were very slow for count species. Flying out over Somenos Marsh near the Forest Museum were both Tree and Violet-green Swallow and as it turned out they appeared nearly every where we went today with many hundreds seen. We did manage to find the Western Grebe again on Somenos Lake along with a couple of Ruddy Ducks, but other than a few Canada Geese that was it. Oh I nealy forgot as we came down Drinkwater Road along side the forested area I spotted a Pink Peggy who was heading down to see what was on the lake, this species is usually seen along the Dock Road. With most small dickie birds hiding from us today it was hard for the photographers to get many pictures, a lot of our sparrow species have started to move out with both Fox and Golden-crowned Sparrows moving north with just a few feeder birds yet to be enticed away. California Quail are starting to think about increasing the winter deficit and the males are parading around in fresh spring plumage, how could a young lady resist.
At Quist’s farm we did pick up a few Bald Eagles and this week our Red-tailed Hawk numbers bounced back up.
This week we had 2 Peregrine Falcons and 2 Northern Harriers and 1 Coopers Hawk in our raptor total and with 21 Bald Eagles and 10 Red-tailed Hawks. This was a slight decrease from last weeks total.
We slowly worked our way around Westholme and along to Richards Trail, but other than swallows birds were thin on the ground and water. By the time we had finished along Herd Road we had just over 100 Canada Geese and no Trumpeter Swans.
Hwy 18 was our saviour as we saw some Trumpeters as we headed up bedside the golf course, 15 adults and 11 immature was a good ratio, but that was it for some time. After our break it was down onto Boys Road and the raptor car found a few Wood Ducks in a small vegetated wetland, but they did manage to get a couple of pictures between all the branches. Us who were looking for bigger waterfowl found a Northern Harrier and a Peregrine Falcon, go figure?
It was time to move on and with not much to see on the east side we were across the highway and off to Koksilah Road where some big white birds awaited our arrival, Iwas dumped off on the side of the road to count the swans and after adding about 50 I was confronted by the raptor chicks who were taking photos of me as I played with my tripod in the bushes with swans in the background looking on.
We did manage another flock of swans along Koksilah before we headed out onto Bench where once again the big load awaited to be counted and like most weeks they couldn’t have been further away. There was a stiff breeze coming across the fields and it was then that I noticed that muggings was the only one out of the vehicles and with tears streaming down my cheeks from looking through the scope I managed to count 202 adults and 32 immature Trumpeter Swans. Along to Dougan’s Flats we headed and another nice flock of swans but sadly two fancy piggies which have had their pictures taken in previous weeks were not to be found, I can only hope that the bacon that I consumed for brekky were not these porkers.
Another 75 Trumpeters were had over the last few stops and 4 Mute Swans and that was it. A few rain drops started to hit the window screen and we knew that we were lucky on this dull but dry day.
photo credits.
Wood Duck by Kurlene Wenberg
Swan counter, Christina Cutbill
Golden-crowned Sparrow, by Barry Hetschko
California Quali, by Eric Marshall
Derrick