Delta Naturalists Society

With a weather forecast predicting heavy, continuous rain, and an atmospheric river descending on the delta, the few Casual Birders who had signed up for today’s walk all bailed out, except for me. Luckily, the malingerers all politely communicated their non-appearance prior to the planned meeting time, so I did not bother hanging around in the carpark at Centennial Beach following my arrival at 8:50am.

Exactly as forecast, it was bucketing down with rain and visibility was poor. I have, however, experienced much worse birding conditions, and being keen to see some birds, I resolutely set off towards the duck pond.  Here several species were gathered: among the Mallard and American Wigeon were a single female Common Goldeneye, and a male Bufflehead. Bald Eagles sat around in the cottonwood trees, I counted seven, and a single Flicker flew in.

Wandering down to the beach, I was delighted with a flock of a dozen Sanderling, one of my favourite birds, and watched them as they skittered along the waters’ edge. I saw some others further along too, and likely flocks were feeding the length of the beach, as the tide was high. A handful of gulls were at the beach, of two species: Iceland (Thayer’s) and Glaucous-winged, and a tight flock of 22 Greater Scaup were swimming just offshore.

The rain and fogged up binoculars made visibility atrocious, so I was pleased when one of the scaup stretched its wings, showing the greater extent of white that distinguishes Greater from Lesser Scaup. Most of the scaup in winter at this spot are Greaters: they seem to like deeper ocean water. When Len and I did the monthly Beached Bird Survey for many years along Boundary Bay, we often found Greater Scaup carcasses and very few Lesser Scaup. Incidentally, Boundary Bay had the dubious position of having the highest bird carcass rate in the Lower Mainland. I am not sure if it still does, I don’t see many dead ducks these days, but we have an awful lot more eagles too.

The wind was cold and the rain relentless, but I was distracted by a flock of blackbirds and followed them onto the sand. There were 22 Brewer’s Blackbirds and 10 Red-wingeds. Eurasian Starlings kept flying in, and flying off too, which caused problems of sorting out all these black-plumaged birds while using fogged-up glasses and soaking wet binoculars.

I was also getting pretty cold. I did a quick foray along the front trail for a few yards to count a flock of 15 Golden-crowned Sparrows feeding on the ground. A Fox Sparrow and a couple of Spotted Towhees were nearby under the bushes. Together with a couple of Song Sparrows that chirped at me, this brought my 50-minute walk tally to a respectable 18 species, and I headed back to my car.
Anne Murray