Delta Naturalists Society

On Tuesday we went to Blackie Spit and got a special treat from Colin — a walking tour of the back streets of Crescent Beach. The group of 11 was Colin and Stephanie, Bob and Dottie, Johnny Mac, Lee, Mike B, Lorna, Roger, Pat and Glen. It started fairly dark and cloudy with quite a high tide, but by the end, the sun had appeared off and on and it was a nice warm-enough day. We saw 36 species – see Colin’s eBird report below.

It was very quiet out on the spit, mostly crows and Green-winged Teal with one solitary Eurasian Wigeon. Hard to even find a Ring-billed Gull, no little birds in the bushes. There were a few Grebes and Goldeneye diving well off-shore, and someone counted nine seals hauled out on the mud flats across the other side of the Nicomekl channel.

Continuing to the Rene Savenye area, we saw Bald Eagles, European Starlings, Anna’s Hummingbirds, American Robins, Northern Flickers, Spotted Towhees and Juncos in the trees. Off-shore were more Teal, some Scaup, Great Blue Herons, 4 Yellowlegs. We continued around towards the pumphouse seeing finally some Golden-crowned Sparrow, more Teal, some Wigeon and Mallards and suddenly Red-winged Blackbirds were heard everywhere. Colin picked out a Golden-crowned Kinglet across the stream. We reached the pumphouse and took a group photo because, well, you have to have a group photo, right? It was about that point when some grew concerned about not having seen a single raptor all the way along.

And that’s about where it all got strange. Colin suggested we head down to the water’s edge in Crescent Beach, around the point from the spit, because “there should be lots of ducks there”. So we zipped past the Dunsmuir Gardens (no waxwings, no woodpeckers, a few Black-capped chickadees) back to Beecher St and then along the tracks, behind the houses and down Maple St until we could cut along a laneway and take an access path through to the dike along the beach. Whew! The only species seen along there was a 6 ft tall Yellow-legged “Green” Heron (YLGH). We walked along the dike from there back to our starting point at the spit. Not a lot of variety out in the water but there was one large raft of Surf Scoters and another larger raft of White-winged Scoters, unfortunately even Roger’s scope could not locate a Black Scoter.

Just as we were getting back to the Sailing Club, Colin saw a speck hidden among craggy branches way across the parking lot. Binocs and scopes and zoom lenses converged and finally we had our raptor. But which one? Cell phones and books were consulted. Pretty hard to tell, but the best we could do right then was argue the differences of a Sharp-shinned or Cooper’s Hawk… and since then we seem to have settled on Cooper’s Hawk.
Glen Bodie

Photos will be added to flickr

Colin’s eBird list:
Blackie Spit (Incl. Dunsmuir Farm & Nicomekl estuary) Mar 1, 2022
8:06 AM – Traveling 3.20 miles in 212 Minutes
Number of Taxa: 36

1   Eurasian Wigeon
30 American Wigeon
20 Mallard
2   Northern Pintail
75 Green-winged Teal
30 Greater Scaup
50 Surf Scoter
80 White-winged Scoter
5   Bufflehead
2   Common Goldeneye
5   Common/Barrow’s Goldeneye
2   Red-breasted Merganser
6   Horned Grebe
8   Rock Pigeon (Feral Pigeon)
3   Anna’s Hummingbird
6   Greater Yellowlegs
1   Ring-billed Gull
10 Western/Glaucous-winged Gull
8   Common Loon
4   Great Blue Heron
1   Sharp-shinned Hawk or Cooper’s Hawk
5   Bald Eagle
5   Northern Flicker
100 American Crow
12 Black-capped Chickadee
7   Bushtit
1   Golden-crowned Kinglet
60 European Starling
15 American Robin
3   House Finch
25 Dark-eyed Junco
8   Golden-crowned Sparrow
4   White-crowned Sparrow
2   Song Sparrow
1   Spotted Towhee
10 Red-winged Blackbird