Subject: Iona Is., Aug 18/97
Date: Aug 19 23:54:11 1997
From: Michael Price - mprice at mindlink.bc.ca


Hi Tweets,

My pencil busted early into the game today, so this is going to be
highlights only from memory.

Biggest has to be the Upland Sandpiper (pinch me) on Sea Island while I was
cycling back out.

This must be National Prey On Shorebirds Week. *Three* Peregrine Falcons
having a three-way brannigan over the Outflow Pond, the little tundrius-race
male getting (as is getting to be tiresome habit) rousted by the big female
juv Peale's, then a large adult female came from nowhere to run *her* off,
after which things seemed to settle down thus: the male and juv took turns
every 20-30 minutes clearing shorebirds off the ponds (wotta show!), and the
adult female went somewhere else. Best indication a falcon was incoming?
Alarm notes from not just one or two but all the Barn Swallows. Other
raptors there: a juv male 'Black' Merlin spending a lot of time in 'thrush'
flight, a male Cooper's Hawk, a juv Northern Harrier, a Sharp-shinned Hawk,
and a juv Red-tail. The tundrius Peregrine is such a pale blue-gray on his
upperparts as to be almost blue-tinged white on the lower back. He likes to
park it on the fence-posts of the chainlink fence surrounding the Outflow
Pond (across the road from the Birders' Gate). Nifty.

In the trees beside the outflow pond I heard a hard loud warbler chip that
sounded like a Northern Waterthrush. Martin McNicholl came along just then
on a survey and concurred. No visual, the stuff is just too thick there and
there's no access beyond an ivy-and-blackberry overgrown fence. Martin said
he'd just seen a Swainson's Hawk quartering a saltmarsh on the S side of
Vancouver (BC) International Airport.

On a sandbar roost at the tip of the Iona S Jetty was an adult Heerman's
Gull in pre-Basic Molt along with a hauled-out subadult male Red-breasted
Merganser who's summering there, two new family groups of adult/juv
Red-necked Grebes. The Basic 1 male Common Eider (or the Earl of Iona, as
I've fondly come to think of him, given his snooty, aristocratic,
look-down-the-nose expression that's so much the caricature of British
upper-class twitdom) was feeding among the rocks leading to the beacon just
past the jetty tip as has been customary this summer.

Also present were several large flocks of scoters totalling perhaps 3-4
thousand birds, mostly Surf, some White-winged and a few Black Scoters.
These are unusually high summer numbers in this location--average would be
300-600--and I'm concerned that these may be summering first-year birds
displaced from the large summering area of Boundary Bay when it was opened
up for 'recreation': windsurfers, kayaks and sea-doos, three tested
techniques for dealing with and completely curing any infestation of
seabirds we may be suffering. There were *very* large seabird and waterfowl
flocks in Boundary Bay in summer but as far as I know no one's *ever* done
any survey of the vast numbers of birds that are--or were--starting a
kilometer or two out in the Bay itself. Too bad--but so typical for
Vancouver BC--if it's gone without us knowing what was there first.

Further offshore were numbers (~70) of Sterna-type terns, of which I was
able to ID about 30 as Common Terns, and several dozen Bonaparte's Gulls.

In the ponds were juv Stilt, mostly adult Pectoral, juv Greater and Lesser
Yellowlegs, several hundred juv Western, a few juv Least, almost forty
Baird's Sandpipers and about twenty juv Semipalmated Sandpipers on SE and NE
ponds. A single juv Red-necked Phalarope was in a small slough on the SW
pond, while the other seven Red-necked Phalaropes were in the NW corner of
the Outer Pond. The Outflow Pond also had a lot of yellowlegs, a few Stilt
and PecSands.

And your choice of Peregrine to stir the pot every thirty minutes.

Michael Price The Sleep of Reason Gives Birth to Monsters
Vancouver BC Canada -Goya
mprice at mindlink.net