Tweeters,

Last week we, a group of six dutch birders, had a birding trip in North-western
America. We started in Vancouver BC where we spent our first morning in Stanley
Park. We saw about 40 species in four hours, most of which we hadn't seen
before, like Western grebe, Trumpeter swan, Canvasback, Surf scoter(very rare
in Holland), Pileated woodpecker, Spotted towee, Red-winged blackbird and of
course the beautiful Golden eagle. That afternoon we went to Iona Island for
the smaller birds. The next day it started to rain and it didn't look it was
going to look up soon, so we decided to go south, all the way to California!
On the way to California we stopped at different type of habitats and saw
American dipper, lots op Yellow-rumped warblers, Scub jay, Hermit thrush, Snow
goose and Belted kingfisher. In Arcata we started going north again, all the
way down the coast. One of us is a photographer and he had the time of his
life! Your birds are so very tame, unlike ours. We've got great pictures of
Heermanns gull, Harlequin duck, Black turnstone, Surfbird and Common loon. We
now understand why it is called Common loon, in Holland we usually get 1 Common
loon a year, in every harbor along the west coast there must be at least 30.
In Point St George in Northern California we started out with a nice Merlin,
followed 10 minutes later by a Peregrine and 5 minutes after that we were
pleasantly surprised by a Gyrfalcon. I know they should be rare that far south,
but I can be mistaken. It was a gray phase, hunting and going south.
Unfortunately the light wasn't too good, so no pictures, sorry.
We then went back towards Vancouver, but along the way we saw many more birds,
including Marbled godwit, Brandts cormorant, Brown pelican, Willet and lots of
Killdeers, a bird we're all hoping for in Holland.
Driving in Oregon we suddenly had to stop, because a small bird was sitting on
a very busy road, apparently hit by a car. One of us rushed out and grapped the
bird, just in front of a logging truck. The bird turned out to be a Virginia
rail, a bird we hadn't seen before. It was only a bit dazed and after some
pictures the bird began to move again, trying to escape us, so we let it go and
watched it run off. Just before the canadian border in Blaine we spent our last
minutes birdwatching, and were rewarded with a Lesser yellowlegs.
The total of 5 days birdwatching: 125 species, of which 79 were new to us.
We'll probably be back next summer for a longer period.
If in the meantime any of you want to come to Holland, please let me know,
because I can probably at all times arrange for a dutch birder to go along with
you.

See you next year,

Pieter van der Luit