Canada

Yes, if I weren’t a birder I’d be a squirreler, and Columbia ground-squirrel has long been a favorite. They love trashy, newly disturbed roadsides and construction sites–almost as much as they love fresh leaves.

This one was laying on spring fat at the Castlegar airport on Saturday.
And here, for Memorial Day, a lovely flower from the [...]

Alison and I spent yesterday’s midday on a damp and chilly Saturday at the Waldie Island Trail, a relatively new preserve established along the Columbia River near Castlegar, British Columbia.

It wasn’t the optimal time of day, but birding was still pleasant, with the full suite of riparian singers singing riparianly: among them Warbling Vireo, Yellow [...]

Coming in from Switzerland, Wolfram and Dorena are the farthest-flung of the relatives to gather this weekend for Alison’s father’s birthday. We picked them up Saturday afternoon at Castlegar, and took advantage of a brief fog-occasioned delay to bird the perimeter road around the airport.
Lower and drier than Nelson, Castlegar harbors quite a few species [...]

The snowmelt is massive here in southeast British Columbia this spring, and creeks and waterfalls have been transformed into torrents. Too deep and too fast for dippers, most of them, but a sharp-eyed Alison spotted a couple of even better rushing-water denizens.

This and another, equally snazzy drake Harlequin Duck were sheltering in the lee of [...]

Our drive yesterday from Spokane to Nelson, British Columbia, wasn’t much enlivened by birds, though a nice selection of waterfowl on flooded fields and overfull streams did include Ring-necked Duck, Hooded and Common Mergansers, and Cinnamon Teal.  It was a mammal that provided most of the excitement, a black bear bigger and blacker than any [...]