You don’t want to know–and I can barely keep track of–the complications life has brought us in these past six weeks. Suffice it to say that we are henceforth to be counted among the sdribwons. I’m back in Tucson for a couple of weeks, but Alison is already hard at work in the vineyards of Vancouver, after a lightning-fast visit to her family in Nelson and a couple of intensive days of moving in to our new apartment a block from Kitsilano Beach.

In the middle of it all, of course, there has been birding. Gellert and I drove from Tucson to Spokane over the days immediately after Christmas, camping the first night at a chilly Yuba Lake, Utah, where seven Chukars (a species I’d never seen in “the wild”) helped us forget just how cold it could be sleeping in the car in -10 F. (That’s a minus sign. Fahrenheit. Cold.)

Our couple of days in Nelson were very good, if snowy and cold, and it was great to get to spend New Year’s with Mary and Walter and David and Valerie. Early morning walks in the company of Gellert the Cold-Impervious (he went swimming, for crying out loud!) were good for the common deepwater lake species, among them Red-necked Grebe and a nice selection of diving ducks. My first bird of 2010, though, was a dabbler, two pairs of Gadwall on Kootenay Lake.

The second day of the New Year found the three of us packed tight into the Subaru and headed west across southmost British Columbia. It was snowy and treacherous at the higher elevations, and birds were scarce–Alison, though, got to see a g r a y  w o l f while I was studying the maps. I did see my first BC Rough-legged Hawk, a welcome sight anywhere at any time.

It was dark (and rainy) by the time we arrived in Kitsilano, and it was still dark and still rainy when the screams and squeals of Glaucous-winged Gulls woke us up the next morning.

Rather than go birding, we headed down Vine to a truly fine coffee shop for a truly fine orange scone, then did our bit to shore up Sweden’s flagging economy at Ikea. Modest as I am, I still have to point out that I got an entire apartment’s worth of furniture into the back of a single Subaru–then put it all together with a minimum of leftover pieces.

Enough of that. On to birds. Monday saw Alison engrossed in the academic bureaucracy, but Gellert and I, after some clean-up shopping, walked the paths along Kitsilano Beach for a couple of hours. It’s a delight to walk three minutes to Barrow’s Goldeneye.

Even more exciting was the flock of loafing gulls at the swimming pool (a swimming pool on a beach? Must be a Canadian thing.)

Assuming that there must be something else among the Ring-billed Gulls, we paused to look ‘em over–only to find ourselves looking for ring-bills (and finding a few, along with a California Gull) among what was in fact a nice flock of Mew Gulls.

Now I’m excited: I’ve seen this (sub)species of Mew Gull only a couple of times before, so the winter holds great promise for learning.

I almost quit then, but the dog was eager and I was already nicely soaked, so why not? American Wigeon were scattered here and there on the lawns, among them a pair of Eurasian Wigeon–first time I’d ever seen that species without using a car or bicycle.

Bald Eagles, Common Mergansers, a Pelagic Cormorant, and the dark local Song Sparrow round off a fine noontime walk. Hard to believe that not 24 hours later I’d be back in Tucson watching the birds of the desert at our feeders! But I’ll be headed back to Vancouver end of the month to watch winter give way to a Pacific Northwest spring. Can’t wait!