** Reply to Michael P. -

> Took a week off cycling to Iona 'cause of the knee, and heck breaks loose.
> Read in the sighting book this afternoon: a juv *Upland Sandpiper* yesterday
> found by Rick Toochin and Ken Klimko, 50+ Stilt Sandpipers, a large
> migration of both turnstones, Parasitic Jaegers a week and a half early, and
> an Alaskan-race Common Eider hanging around all summer, at least at low
> water. Strange days. The cream sours without warning, the cat jumps without
> cause, and there's aphids in the whatchamacallit.

Another data point: what was likely (90% confidence level) a juv. Upland Sandpiper
was seen E of P.G., central B.C. Aug. 16 by Sandra Kinsey and Laird Law. It will go
on the hypothetical list but is surely the first report of anything resembling an
Upland here.

> And a megashow of aerial truculence, spite and bullying as a bruisin' big
> juv female Peale's (West Coast) Peregrine (which had been screaming in low
> over the ponds once an hour and cleaning them out--I timed her S--->N
> straight-across traverse of the SE pond at a whisker over 2 mississippi's:
> just *howled* across) spent twenty minutes ragging the little male Tundrius
> (Arctic) Peregrine that's been there for about ten days now, until he gave
> up and headed back NE over the river toward the neighborhood of Kerrisdale
> in SW Vancouver BC. A couple of Seattle birders, Curtis and Bobbie Pearson
> were there; Curtis said that at first he thought the female falcon was
> chasing a yellowlegs, so great was the size disparity.

Caution here. Male Peale's are *usually* much bluer and smaller than the females.
The only dead-ringer field mark for distinguishing the two races is that the whitish
area to the rear of the "sideburn" in _pealei_ is always streaked with dusky while
that of _tundrius_ is unmarked. The pair which frequented (still does?) the s. end
of the Charlottes in the late 1970s was typical of this extremism. The female was as
big as any of the ravens there and very brownish with only a hint of a bluish gloss
on the dorsum. The male was a lil' pipsqueak in comparison and was an extremely
beautiful steel-blue on the back.

- Jack



Jack Bowling
Prince George, BC
jcbowling at mindlink.bc.ca