Hi Tweets,

What a lovely day. Was able to slip the leash on a couple of errands and
went to Iona instead, into the settling ponds and then out to the tip of the
S Jetty. Highlights were an adult Thayer's Gull, personal first one back,
over the NE settling pond, a rather late (avg departure from Vancouver BC:
9/08) Black-headed Grosbeak in the Cora Brown woodlot near MacDonald Road, a
'Yellow-shafted' Flicker (a sure sign of migration out to the coast from the
north-central part of the province) at the S end of the Iona Causeway, and
as well, on the NE pond perhaps the brightest juv Sharp-tailed Sandpiper
I've *ever* seen--just glowed redhot compared to even the brightest
Pectorals. The little male 'tundrius' Peregrine Falcon is still around, made
one blazing pass over the two eastern ponds no more than a meter above the
surface. Followed it almost out of sight (at 60x in a Kowa on a clear day
with little heat haze) to the N where it finally turned, somewhere over
darkest Marpole and made a run at a startled migrating Turkey Vulture. Oho,
thinks I, of course: a good NW wind in later September and the hawk
migration's on. Yup: Red-tails, Northern Harriers, and a Sharp-shinned in
one short scan, riding the wave over Point Grey then slanting down SE toword
Iona to pick up a flat-country thermal.

Out on the jetty, up to six different Parasitic Jaegers tearing around about
kilometer or more offshore (they're not very close unless the tide's lower).
There were Song and Savannah Sparrows in the vegetation along the length as
well as four remaining Lapland Longspurs feeding tamely at the end. The
Western Grebes are just beginning to come back, and one grebe at great
distance seemed pale-bodied and whiter-faced compared to the two pretty sure
Westerns beside it, but we couldn't confirm our suspicions that it might
have been a Clark's (very close to their arrival, 9/28, though).

Another highlight was not only discovering the Common Eider is now
flightworthy, but also what it does during high tide, when it's not at the
end of the Iona S jetty (and hats off to the two beginner birders who stood
quietly at the tip with the rest of us as we moaned about not being able to
find the eider, and then casually metioned it was working the pilings on the
S side of the jetty just before the tip: we hotshots had walked right past a
large conspicuously-different duck not 30 meters from shore!). As the tide
wasn't quite low enough to bring the eider into the tip area where we're
used to seeing it, it spent a lot of time working on the mussels at the base
of the pilings, and then simply let the tide current carry it away. When it
wasn't at the tip or the pilings, it was moving around, usually solitary,
well to the S of the jetty and often well back toward the shore, and Stan
Olson relocated it from the jetty tip a number of times waaay back toward
the airport. It was also, according to the sighting book, off the N side of
the jetty in the vicinity of the first shelter day before yesterday.

I imagine that after spending a fair amount of time flightless while it
molted, a duck or goose will start flying around just to regain the muscle
tone necessary for migration. Which means it may move off the Iona site if
the scoters start moving around, so it may be prudent to come see it now, if
you haven't already. It preened frequently, often sitting up on the water
and beating its wings. It's also moving fairly quickly into an Alternate
plumage: the scapulars are quite solidly white now, and the underparts
completely black, so it's distant 'look' is now of a large warm brown bird
with a white back.

A less cheerful occurrence was the observed shooting of several gulls by a
staffer at the Vancouver International Airport. The fact that they were
nowhere near the flightlines, and the Canada Goose flock that usually *is*
is usually just rousted by noisemakers from the short grass so obligingly
cut around the runways by the airport, suggests that the shootings may have
had less to do with dangers to incoming aircraft than simple boredom. Well,
simple pleasures, hmm? The airport recently gained a permit to shoot Snow
Geese that gather in the foreshore marshes on the western approaches. Gee,
when you build a major airport directly athwart the main coastal migration
flyway, and I mean *directly* across it, all these millions of darn birds
make it hard to run it safely. So they have a guy who--I'm not making this
up, you know '-) --does nothing but drive around and around the airport
periphery all day setting off noisemakers and firing rockets. Without
getting out of the truck, I might add. There are days when Vancouver
International Airport sounds like it's hosting a small civil war; the firing
is nonstop. Strangely, if the purpose is to keep birds away from the
runways, then it assumes the birds don't go near the runways to graze on the
mowed grass at night. Simple observation says *that* ain't so. Seeing this,
I wonder if the airport people have thought this wildlife stuff *all* the
way through.

Conditions: Temp: 18-20 C; Wind: NW 10-15, dropping to calm at evening;
Barom: high; Cloud: 1/10 scattered cirrus at midday, cloudless by later
aft.; Tide: a slack 'high' low in aft, flood in late aft; Sea: light NW chop
dropping to oily calm by evening.


Settling Ponds

Canada Goose 19
Turkey Vulture 1
Northern Harrier 5 1f 4jv
Sharp-shinned Hawk 1
Red-tailed Hawk 5
Ameican Kestrel 1 m
Peregrine Falcon 1 m, tundrius
Killdeer 3
Semipalmated Sandpiper 1 jv
Western Sandpiper 18 jv
Least Sandpiper 2 jv
Baird's Sandpiper 3 jv
Pectoral Sandpiper 235 all jv
Sharp-tailed Sandpiper 1 jv
Long-billed Dowitcher 41 jv
Ring-billed Gull 3 pre-Basic 2 Molt
Thayer's Gull 1 pre-Def Basic Molt
Glaucous-winged Gull 4 2 jv
Rock Dove 3
Band-tailed Pigeon 2
Barn Swallow 3 jv
Northwestern Crow 12
American Pipit 3
European Starling ~200
Savannah Sparrow ~80
Song Sparrow 2
House Finch 6


Iona S Jetty, mostly from tip (with Stan Olson, in part)

Red-throated Loon 1 worn Def Alt
Pacific Loon 2
Common Loon 23 all plumages, from juv on
Horned Grebe 2
Red-necked Grebe 5 2a 2jv
Western Grebe 25 influx
Double-cr. Cormorant 39 21 jv (1 ad nest-building on beacon)
Pelagic Cormorant 1
Green-winged Teal ~500 most at base
Mallard ~20
Northern Pintail 16 migrant flock in off Strait
Gadwall 1 m
American Wigeon 9
Common Eider 1 pre-Alternate 1 Molt
Surf Scoter ~2000
White-winged Scoter 7 6m 1f
Amer. Golden-plover 1 flyover
Western Sandpiper ~90 jv & Bsc 1 Molt
Least Sandpiper 2 jv
Parasitic Jaeger 6 5 Light-morph, 1 Dark-morph
Bonaparte's Gull ~150 most Bsc 1, a few Def Bsc
Mew Gull 1 ad
Ring-billed Gull ~30
California Gull 10
Glaucous-winged Gull 24
Caspian Tern 3 2a 1jv
Common Tern ~150
Pigeon Guillemot 1 jv, at tip
Barn Swallow 2 jv
Northwestern Crow 4
American Pipit 3
Savannah Sparrow ~30
Song Sparrow 3
Lapland Longspur 4 1f 2m 1?

loon sp. 2 (poss Red-throated)
grebe sp 8 (1 poss Basic-pl. Eared, 1 poss Clark's)
cormorant sp. 12
scoter sp. ~3000
sterna sp. ~400

Cheers

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