Hi Tweets,

Went out late this aft to twitch the juv Brown Pelican that was at the tip
of the Iona South Jetty yesterday (BTW congratz to Durel and you guys on a
good find, Ken), but though at the tip to sunset, no luck, but a pile of
newly-arrived family groups of Common Loon adults with juveniles are there,
with a few molting adults--26 birds, 7 of them juveniles, compared to the
summering population of 10-15. While cycling along Ferguson Road in deep
twilight, I heard the unmistakeable hollow, somewhat wooden 'pweptepteptep'
call of an UPLAND SANDPIPER (Bartramia longicauda), as the bird seemed to
circle overhead, calling repeatedly. Why unmistakeable? Because I saw my
lifer Upland about only two weeks ago and made a point of writing down the
phrasing and quality of its call and memorising both. Paid off bigtime, but
I'm still shaking my head: 43 birding years to find the first one, then two
weeks until the next.

Location: the large field on the S side of Ferguson Rd. between the road and
the Vancouver International Airport fence, 150 meters E of the intersection
of Ferguson and McDonald Road. The rough-pasture habitat--the result of N
runway construction, begins just E of the dogleg from Grauer to Ferguson
(where there's usually a bunch of people plane-spotting right under the
flight line of planes landing on the new N runway if the winds westerly) and
extends along the S side of Ferguson off-and-on until the S end of the Iona
Causeway. There's enough of it to hide a ton of Uplands.

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