This lovely Short-eared Owl flew from the Iona jetty to the Vancouver airport Friday morning, pausing in flight to make sure the Northern Harrier that had flushed it wasn’t still in pursuit.

Short-ears apparently used to be quite common on Sea Island, but I’m told that large numbers of them were shot when the airport was most recently expanded. Great. Hope this one doesn’t fall prey to paranoia.

For the entire first half dozen years of my birding life, Franklin’s Gull was the larid I’d seen most of: sure, Ring-billed Gulls were common enough at the right season in eastern Nebraska, but the dribs and drabs of other gulls we saw paled against the autumn flights of Franklin’s, with tens of thousands of birds passing in an afternoon.

I left the Midwest in 1983 (!), and haven’t seen all that many of the species since: the occasional migrant in Arizona, arriving winterers in Peru last month, a few breeding birds on my infrequent visits to the prairies and intermountain marshes. And so this morning I leapt at the chance to look for one reported from Steveston, just south of Vancouver.

The parking lot of the fish restaurant where, appropriately, the bird was first reported was empty. But the rain puddles on the oceanside park had a few birds on them: Snow Geese, Rock Pigeons, Brewer’s Blackbirds, and Glaucous-winged, Mew, and Ring-billed Gulls. And among them all a lovely little first-cycle Franklin’s Gull.

Unfortunately, as everywhere on British Columbia’s Lower Mainland, scofflaw dog walkers were setting their animals on the flock, so the birds were up and down, down and up several times during the half hour I watched them. At least that meant good views of the Franklin’s Gull in flight–though I would gladly have forgone them had it meant the bird’s getting a bit more peace.

I was surprised in the field to see that the central tail feathers were white: has this bird already molted that pair?

Drizzle drops was more like it on my visit to the Iona Jetty this morning; after a few minutes’ blue skies and sun early on, the clouds started to lower again, and the first drops of moisture hit my lenses just as I reached the ultimate point on the 2.5-mile walk out. But no matter: there were birds.

A small gang of Snow Buntings, accompanied by a single Lapland Longspur, were feeding in the grass, my first of either species since their reassignment to the family Calcariidae: almost as good as life birds that way!

The surf-tossed rocks at the tip of the jetty were paved with Dunlin; I counted 555 birds, nearly all of them still showing juvenile coverts–I suppose the adults have taken advantage of the wisdom of age to fly farther south already. Scattered in among the red-backs were ten Sanderling and three lingering Western Sandpipers; it felt downright European to be looking through Dunlin for Westerns!

The walk back was occasion for a moment of humility. I’d checked the big flocks of Surf Scoters carefully on the way out, and wouldn’t have bothered looking again had I not run into a biking father and daughter team who told me they’d seen a Black Scoter near the base of the jetty. Really?

Really.

The bird, a fine stiff-tailed drake, was keeping company with a male Surf Scoter just off the rocks. Like the calcariids, this bird, too, was the first I’d seen since its name change at the hands of the AOU this past summer, and cute as a butternose bug, too.

If most people know Cecil Green Park at all, it’s as the location of the University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology, perhaps the finest collection of Pacific Northwest art in the world.

It’s also a good birding spot, especially this time of year, when the brambly edges are filled with sparrows. I went out early this morning, probably too early on a cool and damp day, and wandered around ’til my meter had run out, watching emberizids on the paths and newly bladed patch near the parking lot.

The reward? Spotted Towhees, Song Sparrows, Savannah Sparrows, Lincoln’s Sparrows, Oregon Juncos, and several Sooty Fox Sparrows, including the one in the photo. And some quiet face time with the totem poles.

A quick stop at Vanier Park here in Kitsilano yesterday noon turned up this fine bright Eurasian Wigeon on the pond.

One was there most of last winter, so maybe this one will be reliable, too. Great to live in place where birds like this are just a short walk out the door and down the street!