PHOTO: Red-winged Blackbird by Glen Bodie….
On a bright clear sunny crisp and crunchy day at Terra Nova eight DNCBers met: Richard, Colin and Stephanie, Warren and Lynne, Lou, Anne and Glen. There were also a few Nature Vancouver birders there trying to find each other amid the construction trucks fixing the road. Perhaps our best birding of the day was from that parking lot – Trumpeter Swans, Double-crested Cormorant, American Wigeon, Mallard, Northern Pintail, Green-winged Teal, Gulls, Dunlin, Red-breasted Merganser, Red-throated Loon, Great Blue Heron and Red-winged Blackbird. An auspicious start! At the end of our walk, as we returned to that parking lot, we also added Red-breasted Sapsucker and Bewick’s Wren.
For the rest of the walk we followed our regular route through the playground, across the bridge, through the bushes, over to the gardens, across the road, around the marsh, out to the foreshore and back through the park to the parking. We had about the same number of species on that large loop as we had from the parking lot! Throughout the trail was snowy and sometimes icy leading one to pay attention to one’s footing though I’m not expecting any insurance claims. All of the ponds and ditches were covered in quite solid looking ice and so all the aquatic species had gone away looking for open water. The smaller bush birds were quite plentiful throughout – Black-capped Chickadees, Spotted Towhees, Song Sparrows. And we added a few Fox Sparrows, Golden-crowned Sparrows, American Robins, European Starlings, House Finches, Anna’s Hummingbirds, Red-breasted Nuthatch, and the ubiquitous Crows.
We searched for Owls in all the usual places. A passer-by told us where to find a Green-horned Owl [sic]! Of course that was a bust, but in looking for it we also didn’t find a Great-horned Owl. We were frequently interrupted by another 500-1000 Snow Geese flying overhead, all seemingly headed up to the river or maybe the airport. We didn’t see any of them again until we were driving home and there they were, a huge group, along the banks of the river, with cell-phone wielding humans walking among them and apparently not disturbing them much at all. Warren and Lynne saw 30 Bald Eagles along Highway 99 coming north from White Rock, but in Terra Nova we only saw 5. We had a juvenile Red-tailed Hawk perched quite close to us, and a few Northern Harriers patrolled the foreshore.
The weather may have made it predictable, but we were somewhat amazed at what we didn’t see – Northern Flicker, Varied Thrush, Pied-billed Grebe, Canada Geese, Pigeons, Pelagic Cormorant, Woodpeckers, Bushtits, Kinglets, Creeper, Pine Siskin. Those would have made this quite a list. As it was, we had a great day for a walk and ended up with 31 species.
Report by Glen Bodie
Photos are on Flickr
Next Sunday, Tuesday & Wednesday (February 16, 18 & 19) the outings will be to Centennial Beach in Tsawwassen.
Meet at 9 am in the concession/washroom parking lot.
To sign up for an outing, click on the DNS bird outing schedule sheet.
Delta Naturalists Society 