Where were the birds?
We were all there in great numbers: Liz and Alan, Brian and Louise, Warren and Lynne, Anne, Brian R, Jonny Mac, Lee, Lidia, Lindly, Margaret, Marion, Glen and newcomer Joanna Chin who gamely made the whole trip with us on a pair of crutches! Maybe our large number scared off the birds?
We invented a measure of birding success as being the number of birds seen given the amount of energy expended measured as “birds per joule”. This trip may well have been the lowest ever on that scale. The bird list collected by Anne (plus some additions) is at the end of the report and does show a respectable 25 species, but there were LONG periods of time when we neither saw nor heard anything.
It was an easy and scenic walk around the Alaksen trails, not too hot, a bit of a breeze off the river, and only the mosquitos to contend with. We had the most sightings very close to the CWS offices: Spotted Towhee, Cedar Waxwing, Song Sparrow, Brown Creeper, Black-capped Chickadee, Anna’s Hummingbird, American Goldfinch and Northern Flicker. Some saw some Wilson’s Warblers. The Triangle Trail around the East end of the island was almost silent except for the casual birding chatter.
We found two Owl feathers and saw some whitewash, but no Owls were seen. Almost no waterfowl, just a few Mallards, two Pintails and two Wood Ducks in London Slough, quite a few Great Blue Herons but no Cormorants out on the breakwater in the Fraser River.
Our trip was bookended by some nice sightings. Before we entered the gates, two flocks of Canada Geese passed overhead, maybe 100 in total, and a Cooper’s Hawk was perched atop a tree along the road. Some saw the Cooper’s again once we were walking around. The last thing we saw was after some had already left and the rest of us wandered out to the fields behind the CWS offices to find “many” birds hawking insects (mosquitos we hoped) above a field of clover. It was a mix of Purple Martins, Barn Swallows and either Tree or Violet-green Swallows.
The plant lesson for the day was on blackberries which were quickly transitioning from tart to shrivelled and you had to pick carefully to get the sweet ones. There were of course lots of the very common Himalayan Blackberries, but also some clusters of Cutleaf or Evergreen Blackberries. Both are introduced species which out-compete the native Pacific Blackberry that is more often found close to the ground.
Glen Bodie
eBird list from Anne (with some additions from others):
22 species (+3 other taxa)
Canada Goose 100
Wood Duck 2
Mallard 7
Northern Pintail 2
Anna’s Hummingbird 1
shorebird sp. 12 2 groups of mid-size/large shorebirds in flight quite high up
Glaucous-winged Gull 2
Great Blue Heron (Great Blue) 10
Cooper’s Hawk 1
Bald Eagle 1
Downy Woodpecker 1
Northern Flicker 1
Black-capped Chickadee 11
Purple Martin X
Tree/Violet-green Swallow X
Barn Swallow (American) X
swallow sp. 50 Distant flock mixed martins and swallows
Golden-crowned Kinglet 1<
Brown Creeper 1
Cedar Waxwing 5
House Finch 2
American Goldfinch 4
Song Sparrow 5
Spotted Towhee 2
Wilson’s Warbler 6
Delta Naturalists Society 
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