Tweets,

Arrived at the Iona ponds around 6:30 pm Wednesday evening. This being late summer,
early fall, decided to walk down "the corridor" along the chain link fence line
separating the outer and inner ponds. To the west are the deeper outer ponds
surrounded in cat-tail and bull-rush intersperced with canary reed grass and purple
loose-strife. Along the fence proper are a few cottonwood around 60 feet in height
with both species of blackberry and the odd elderberry growing near the edge of the
path below the canopy of the cottonwood. To the east are the famed inner sludge
ponds. My primary purpose tonight is to look for the Northern Waterthrush originally
found by Steve Mlodninow last weekend at Iona.

The sun setting to the west, is still aways from the horizon, and I decide to walk
the inner ponds. As luck would have it, Rick Toochin catches up with me and we bird
together. Most of the grasses and associated plants are starting to go to seed with
the continual hot dry weather, and everything is starting to look very tempting to
the seed eaters. Rick has decided to course the tall grasses on foot in anticipation
of flushing the Clay-coloured or Brewer's Sparrows that have been seen in the past
week. A Fox sparrow flushes and lands in the recently mowed black-berry hedgerow
afording good looks for all, then amongst the 10's of Savannah sparrows, a fall
plumaged Lincoln's alights in the same hedgerow, gotta like those greys the bird is
showing this time of the year!

We continue down the trail between the NW and SW ponds flushing finches and
sparrows. I am personally amazed at how the birds disappear in the weeds and
grasses after they have been startled. No wonder we keep referring to them as LBJ's
(little brown jobs). In the NW pond that is now overgrown with various low
weeds(the tomatoes aren't quite ripe yet) that I cannot identify, there is a small
pocket of standing water that has been host to some "great" shorebirds this year.
Tonight there are Least, Western, Lesser-yellowleg, Spotted, and Pectoral juvenile
sandpipers feeding and preening along the pond edge.

The sun is close to setting, and Rick and I decide to go sit on the path to see if
we cannot relocate the Northern Waterthrush. Chip. Chip. I race to see Yellow
Warblers. A pair of them relatively high up in the cottonwoods. The Barn swallows
have amassed to close to 2500 birds feeding on the midges and who knows what all
else, over the water and surrounding marsh plants.

Another chip! Down the path I race to see a lone MacGillvary's Warbler tucked in
the Elderberry. Fall birding is about the subtle 20 minute period just before the
sun sets when the birds make the last hey! here I am call notes.

As I am chasing up and down the fence line, I look back and Rick, his bins glued to
his eyes, is giving me the international bird sign of "get over here!" I chase
back, only briefly startled by the garter snake crossing where I want to step to see
the bird we had set out to see "the Northern Waterthrush" perched and skinning up
and down the reed on the islands across from where we were sitting. Tail bobbing,
doing the shuffle, for all the world to see. Nice bird that, the Northern
Waterthrush.

The 2500 or so Barn swallows, by now, have risen so high they are almost
indistinguishalbe and are presumably on their way south.

Ken Klimko
Richmond, BC
kkalimo at direct.ca