Hi Tweets,

I'm a usual backyard birder and mosly lurker on this list but, after reading
all your posts over the last couple of years, I decided to get a little more
serious about birding. I took a beginning birding course this fall and went
on my first field trip with the Victoria Natural History Society yesterday.
We went to see the Snow Geese at Reifel. What a sight!!! We saw flocks of
thousands there and at Brunswick Point. In all the group got 100 species
for the day. The last one was an Old Squaw while waiting for the ferry to
go back to the Island.

I personally got FAR LESS than 100. If I couldn't really identify it or see
it in a scope I didn't mark it down but I got some really great lifers. We
stopped at the Tsawwassen Jetty on the way to Reifel and saw the Willet. It
was standing on a log in the water just below the Condo complex. At Reifel
I saw the resident Sandhill Crane and also two "wild" ones. One was half
the size of the other. A "lesser" Sandhill? Also saw an Short-eared Owl
being harrassed by a crow. We also went to Roberts Bank.

In all it was a really great and tiring day and I got to meet some really
friendly people who were great at sharing their knowledge and their scopes.

Some of the species I saw (without numbers of birds because I not great at
this yet) are:

Willet
Snow Geese
Short-eared Owls
Black-crowned Night-Heron
Great Blue Herons
Wood Duck
Bald Eagles
Northern Harriers
American Coots
Sandhill Cranes
Killdeer
Greater Yellowlegs
Sanderlings
Dunlin
Long-billed Dowitchers
Downy Woodpeckers
Black-capped Chickadees
Golden-crowned Kinglet
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Cedar Waxwings
Norther Shrike
Song Sparrow
Brewer's Blackbird
Pine Siskens



Catherine Fryer
Victoria, BC
cfryer at pacificcoast.net