Our morning wasn’t exactly a dud, but I can’t say that we were subjected to all that many interruptions of a feathered kind, either, as Alison and I birded Verona and Hilltop Parks.

We did come up with 21 species, none of them rare or otherwise notable to anyone who can’t appreciate a Great Blue Heron standing motionless in the shade, a Red-tailed Hawk being blown overhead like a huge rusty leaf, or a curious White-throated Sparrow emerging, silent for once, from the brush to check us out.

We’ve had lots of good CBCs together now over the years. Wonder where next December will find us birding!

See you there?

It was chilly and sprinkly (and dark!) when we started shortly before 8:00, but the weather just got better and better as the day wore on, as you can see in those funny blue spaces–oh yeah, the sky!–in the photo of one of our two Pileated Woodpeckers.

We spent the morning right along the river, birding a narrow strip of parkland between the Fraser and the encroaching “industrial parks” (a real contradictio in adjecto, as Mike pointed out).

The landscape wasn’t all that appealing for most of the stretch, but the birding was good. Golden-crowned Kinglets and Pacific Wrens were with us always, and a lingering Hermit Thrush was a nice sight. Hairy Woodpecker is a species I rarely see in Vancouver for some reason, and the wonderful looks at a black-winged female feeding, uncharacteristically, on the ground, probably made that species “bird of the day” for me.

Bird of the day from the perspective of the count was a male American Kestrel on a wire at the “swinging bridge,” a great massive structure that pivots to let tugboats and barges pass up and down the river. Sadly, kestrels are rare to the point of vanishing in the Vancouver area, and the sight of that little falcon pumping his tail on the line, still so familiar in the midwest and southwest, was a novelty for us today.

It wasn’t all urban wasteland. After lunch with Brian, Janice, and Mary, we set off uphill to bird “the ravines,” a series of beautifully forested canyons cutting  down through Burnaby’s south slope to the floodplain.

It was here that we found our two big woodpeckers and Alison picked up the day’s only Varied Thrushes; the Pacific coast forest in the afternoon isn’t exactly the birdiest place in the world, but the scenery was well worth the walk, especially considering how hyper-developed the surroundings.

We ended the day in Burnaby’s Central Park, a wonderful revelation in the late afternoon sunshine.

While Alison walked Gellert (he’d been very patient in the car all day), Mike and I watched the Sunday afternoon park-goers feeding Black-capped and Chestnut-backed Chickadees from the hand, and sorted through the 166 (I counted ‘em) Glaucous-winged-type Gulls to find a slightly darkish Western x Glaucous-winged Gull hybrid (or introgressant).

It's really not that good, is it? But it was the darkest bird we had good looks at all day.

We also found a single Thayer’s Gull, a pretty adult.

And that was the last new species for us on a wonderful day afield. Tomorrow to the Kootenays!

Photo by Kim Taylor.

Many thanks to Scott for sending us this photo! If you haven’t done the Manning Park Bird Blitz before, give some serious thought to attending next June. You’ll like it, I promise.

There were lots of birds around on a fine spring-like morning, with migrants and summer arrivals well represented–from a Townsend’s Solitaire to numbers of nice bright Orange-crowned Warblers.

The “best” birds from my point of view, though, were two typically eastern phenomena: a fantastic male Slate-colored Junco and a bizarre Northern Flicker introgressant. The flicker, seen only on the ground in the grass (and thus its shafts never visible) had two well-developed red malar stripes, neither with any obvious black, and a somewhat thin but still complete red nuchal crescent. Both were reminders that British Columbia is huge–and that Slate-colored Juncos and Yellow-shafted Flickers both breed in the province, just, oh, several hundred miles north of Vancouver.

This year was different.

A Magnificent Frigatebird, hanging in the air above our hotel.

Molly, Rich, Will, and I met Thursday afternoon to start on the drive to Puerto Peñasco, that scruffy playground on the eastern shore of the Sea of Cortez. We took a few minutes to admire the two (two!) Violet-crowned Hummingbirds in Rich’s urban Tucson yard, then it was west, west, west to Lukeville and across the border into Sonora.

The usual birds on the three-and-a-half-hour drive down, but we arrived in town in time to check the inner harbor, where Rich discovered this nice-looking Western Gull.

(That’s a Heermann’s Gull behind it, and a gluttonous Yellow-footed Gull with its head in the rocks.)

Our hotel, the oddly named Viña del Mar, was a great place to watch the sunset

as Brown Pelicans, Blue-footed Boobies, and thousands of Heermann’s Gulls went to roost on the rocks.

A good dinner, a good night’s sleep, and we were ready for the next two days of birding–scouting on Friday, the CBC itself on Saturday.

As usual, larids accounted for most of the highlights. Highest of them all was a first-cycle Glaucous Gull Molly and Rich discovered at the new sewage ponds, a first for me for Sonora.

Look hard: it’s hunkered down just to the left of the salt cedar. This is a great bird for Mexico, but I have to say that I also enjoyed lingering look at a couple of Thayer’s Gulls and an apparent Glaucous-winged x Herring Gull or two. It was fantastic to be birding with companions who knew their gulls–I’d say that I was rusty after these years in Arizona, but that would imply, falsely, that I had ever been a well-oiled watcher of gulls. Our upcoming move to Vancouver should fix me up!

One gull that doesn’t require a sophisticated eye was, as usual, abundant and unmissable.

I may well be seeing some of these same individual Heermann’s Gulls in British Columbia this coming summer, when they move north along the Pacific Coast to follow the ferries between Washington and the islands of the Georgia Depression.

No depression for us, though, as we kept on tallying fine birds. Western Bluebirds were all over town, and there were a couple of Mountain Bluebirds scattered around the open desert, too.

This male was near the new sewage ponds, overlooking a barren spot that was filled with feeding House Finches, a Vesper Sparrow, and two Sage Sparrows. I’m afraid that I had to be called back to the business of the count after becoming engrossed in watching the Sage Sparrows–likely to be my last of the species until I see them next on their Great Basin breeding grounds.

We managed to spend some time seawatching, too (a grand word for sitting over a fine meal and watching from the restaurant’s balcony). The shrimp boats coming in to the harbor dragged a trail of gulls and other birds, including Brown Boobies.

A few Forster’s and Royal Terns patrolled the shore, and small numbers of Common and Pacific Loons dotted the waves.

It wasn’t quite dusk when we made our final stop at the dump.

Cattle Egrets and gulls abounded, and Rich discovered–for the second year in a row–a Rusty Blackbird on the back corner of the fence, a bird I managed to miss. And then it was farewell to the birds of the Gulf of California and back to Tucson, with fervent hopes that Alison and I can get back to Sonora someday.

We often think of this taxon as the “dull” scrub-jay, and I suppose they do pale, literally, in comparison with the birds of the Pacific coast; but those blue wings and tail, and even their creaky calls, liven up the desert oaks on a hot morning.

And then of course there’s ornithology’s gift to the limerick writers, the Bushtit.

Bushtits are generally impossible to count as they fuss chaotically through the foliage, but the species has the obliging habit of leaving the foliage single file when it comes time to fly to the next tree. And so we stood and watched until 14 of the little sprites had made the perilous 10-foot crossing to their new hunting grounds.

Our route took us from the bottom of Willow Springs Road to the top of grandiosely titled Black Mountain, across State Trust land and past private ranches. By the time we were done, we’d come up with 65 species, including a surprising Pine Siskin. More expected migrants included the usual Western Tanagers, Black-headed Grosbeaks, Lazuli Buntings, and Townsend’s, Wilson’s, and MacGillivray’s Warblers.

The birding was fun–when is it not?–and there were some nice bonuses from the other realms of nature, too. It was still early and cool when a smallish Western Diamondback came onto the road in front of the vehicle; we ushered it into the ditch, worried that another driver might be less solicitous of a rattlesnake’s well-being. Zebra-tailed Lizards and various whiptails were everywhere on the roads and trails, and one stop gave us this fine fellow.

If I can find my field guide, I’ll try to figure out just which Phrynosoma this was. After carefully moving the cholla joint out of the way, I put my hand on the ground and he scooted onto it, docile as they usually are.

Photo by John Harned

Higher, on the flank of Black Mountain, Darlene spotted a pinkish snake–perhaps a Coachwhip–as it disappeared beneath a stock tank. When we wandered over to look for the serpent, we found a leak in the tank and a small party of puddling spring azures, marine blues, and pipevine swallowtails.

The most amazing insect I saw all day, though, was a bright pink wasp nectaring in the mesquite flowers.

Mark my words: the next big thing in natural history hobbies is going to be waspwatching!