Tweets,

Ken, I loved reading your account of your visit to the Iona ponds in search
of the Northern Waterthrush. When I read it a second time I realized it was
a masterful piece of writing; I am thrilled that you took the time to craft
it (for us?) and I'm sure that many others in Tweeterdom appreciated it too.

Darrel Whipple
dwhipple at columbia-center.org

At 10:00 PM 8/27/98 -0800, you wrote:
>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
>
>