After these past several field trips in the rain, my Nature Vancouver group and I almost felt like we deserved today: look at that sky! It wasn’t warm, barely above freezing most of the day, but irresistibly beautiful all the same at Vanier Park and on the shores of English Bay.

As you might expect in Vancouver in December, our morning’s list was heavily weighted towards waterfowl. Of our 36 species, fully fifteen and a half were anatids, among them some local specialties. The little pond at Vanier Park produced the expected Eurasian Wigeon; there was general agreement that this male rather outshines the females we’d been watching on the last couple of trips to Jericho!

The Canada Goose flock, a bit standoffish of late, finally stood still to let us scan it; the results included two other species of goose, a single juvenile Snow Goose and this lovely minima Cackling Goose.

And the rarest bird of the day was the reliable little Bucephala hybrid, bobbing and diving more or less on his own in the vicinity of the Surf and White-winged Scoters.

But the interesting sighitng of the morning was provided by a common anatid, Northern Shoveler. Peter discovered two on the pond, swimming circles around each other in the classic shoveler “pinwheel.”

Click for a dizzying video.

Both birds were brown, but one–the right-hand bird in the photo above–showed a solid black bill and a yellow eye, sexing it a male; closer inspection revealed a decided ruddy tone to many feathers of the flank.

The molts of Northern Shoveler remain something of a mystery, but this is apparently a first-cycle male at the very dullest extreme, easily overlooked in a first scan, but a real eye-opener if you pause to look close.

I’ve got to hand it to this Long Weekend group of mine: no matter how cold, no matter how early, no matter how bleak the skies, they’re up and ready to go!

Today’s destinations, of course, were exceptionally motivating: the giant bird feeder that is Reifel Refuge and the jetty at the Tsawwassen ferry.

We spent an hour wandering the roads of Westham Island, picking up a first-winter Northern Shrike, a single Eurasian Collared-Dove, and a beautiful Slate-colored Junco at Vari’s feeders. The swan flock I’d been keeping up my sleeve as an unfailing backup was g-o-n-e, but after the flocks of Trumpeter Swans we’d been seeing the days before, it was easy to forgive them (we did have four pass overhead at Reifel later in the morning).

Reifel, as always, was crazy. Nowhere else can you get so incredibly, so intimidatingly close to Sandhill Cranes, and the emberizids scattered on the paths are just as impressive. After struggling sometimes to get the whole group on furtive Sooty Fox Sparrows these past days, it’s tremendous to have multiple individuals gobbling food right out in the open on the paths–usually just next to a Song Sparrow or two for convenient comparison.

A propos de Song Sparrow, we had at least one relatively pale, finely marked, cold-toned individual today, obviously different from the usual dark red subspecieses here in the winter. I’ll try to figure it out.

Reifel is most famous for the waterfowl show, and if anything, today’s was even better than usual, with birds crowded out of the iced-over ponds and concentrated on the open water. The Snow Geese were offshore, a noisy, glistening flock of 3,000 (not sure where the others were!). All of the usual shallow-water species were in good numbers on the open ponds, among them a very handsome surprise.

This beast was floating among Mallards and Northern Pintails, and no doubt felt quite at home with either and both. This is a common and well-known hybrid combination, but today was the first time I’d ever seen it in the wild, and this bird is a beauty. Bill, head shape, neck pattern, tail, and wing are all very strongly pintail-like, but the black rump and broad, silvery tertials obviously the product of mallard influence. Like most of the dabblers at Reifel, it is already very tame, giving great close-up views.

But that wasn’t the end of today’s funny ducks. Among the many thousands of waterfowl at the Tsawwassen jetty, a tiny white bird stood out: another male goldeneye x bufflehead hybrid. Too distant for photos, but a very striking and strikingly odd bird, somewhat whiter-headed than the one hanging out here in Kitsilano. With no black on the breast sides and only a few longitudinal streaks visible in the wing coverts, this is probably a Common Goldeneye x Bufflehead hybrid, though it’s impossible to rule anything out when these anatids get to miscegenatin’.

I’d gone 35 years without ever seeing such a bird, and now here in Vancouver, I’ve seen three different individuals in eleven months. Odd place, the west coast!

A stormy night in Vancouver ceded to a sunny but still terrifically windy morning, and the gale didn’t much help our birding on my Nature Vancouver field trip to Kitsilano Point and Vanier Park. We made do, though, and I think we all enjoyed the great looks at Cackling Goose, Eurasian Wigeon, and Cassiar Junco.

On my way home, I paused on Kits Beach to scope the goldeneye flock. I was happy to find seven Common Goldeneyes among more than ten times that many Barrow’s–and the cute little white thing in the photo above.

A sharp-eyed observer discovered this funny duck last Thursday, and it appears–fingers firmly crossed–to have settled in for the winter. The first descriptions made me think that it would turn out to be a Hooded Merganser hybrid, but there’s little about it, now that I’ve seen it several times, to make me believe that there is any but Bucephala blood in its veins.

The size, bright white body, and flattish bill are pretty obviously those of a Bufflehead ancestor, I think, while the head pattern, with its clearly green gloss and that round spot at the bill base, can be accounted for by Common Goldeneye parentage. In the field, there is definitely a yellowish-pink tinge to the upper mandible, which can’t be explained by anything I can think of.

Weirdest of all is the shape of this bird’s head. If the patchy patterns can be explained as a mixture of goldeneye and bufflehead influence, I have no idea where the straight nape and odd little curly crest–sometimes obvious, sometimes not–could come from. Any suggestions?