Hi Tweets,

Over to Stanley Park for the afternoon with friends Mike Beck and Bev Gordon
to look at a few birds.

I'm surprised to see no postings on the oil spill here in Vancouver BC.
Apparently this happened on Thursday. Details as I understand them: 200+
gallons of Canola (rapeseed) oil spilled near the VanTerm docks in the Inner
Harbor. Being light, it spreads rapidly and covers a very large area very
quickly; unlike a heavier oil it all remains on the surface.Worst hit are
birds in the Inner Harbor, including waters around Stanley Park, Lesser and
Greater Scaups Aythya affinis and marila, Barrow's Goldeneye Bucephala
islandica and some of the American Wigeon Anas americana that graze the
Devonian Park lawn. Lost Lagoon contains literally hundreds of oiled scaup
and a few oiled goldeneye, all hauled out along the edge of the Lagoon, and
crowding along th edges of the islands in the Lagoon, preening. Some were
obviously in distress, and we found three or four dead scaup washed ashore.
Watching a Parks Board crew trying to catch some of the worst-affected birds
showed how difficult retrieval of anything but a virtually moribund bird
actually was.

What bright side this spill has is that, unlike fuel oils, Canola is a
non-toxic cooking oil (so the birds can even ingest it without having to
worry about their cholesterol levels going up) and can be preened away in a
few days. The main damage is to the bird's waterproofing, leading to an
ensuing vulnerability to hypothermia. Further luck--if it can be called
that--is that, in spite of dire Environment Canada forecasts of storm and
tempest, the weather's been remarkably warm and there's beeen no heavy rain.

While the Stanley Park Nature House there has no facilities, so no program,
Wildlife Rescue has set up a cleaning center in Vancouver, not sure where,
so if anyone in Vancouver wants to volunteer, you might call them. Sorry,
don't have the number offhand.

We could *not* relocate either the female Tufted Duck A. fuligula on the
Lagoon, and the intense kayak-traffic off Stanley Park kept the area swept
clean of all but a handful of diehard Barrow's Goldeneyes, so *zero* chance
of finding the eider. but we did find a couple of *very* unusual species
either for the park or the city: a First-winter YELLOW-BILLED LOON Gavia
adamsii off the Second Beach Pool initially located by an Idaho birder,
Marvin? or Melvin? Jones, which we independently lucked onto later (my, the
sunlight shining through that loon's bill looks *yellow*--and wasn't there
an ID feature connected to an open gap between the mandibles?), last seen
drifting E twoard False Creek; and a grey-morph GYRFALCON Falco rusticola
overflying the Park Entrance at Georgia Street while we were checking out
Ol' Stump, the legless Glaucous-winged Gull Larus glaucescens. And the
HARRIS'S SPARROW Zonotrichia querula was in its usual little hideout in the
feeding area at the E end of the Stone Bridge at the W end of Lost Lagoon,
not below the feeders themselves but in another clearing in the same bushes
about 1.5-2 meters toward the little *wooden* bridge.

Combined Species List (Lost Lagoon, Devonian Park, Second Beach)

Red-throated Loon 2
Common Loon 3
YELLOW-BILLED LOON 1 Basic 1
Horned Grebe 25 including flock of 22
Red-necked Grebe 1
Western-type grebes ~100
Double-crested Cormorant 4
Great Blue Heron 8
Canada Goose ~60
Mute Swan 4 intro's
Wood Duck 6 3 pair
Gadwall 1 m, DevPk, oiled
American Wigeon ~40 5 oiled
Mallard ~300
Northern Shoveler 2
Canvasback ~45
Ring-necked Duck 6 5m 1f
Greater Scaup ~50
Lesser Scaup ~600 ~25% on land, oiled
Surf Scoter ~50
White-winged Scoter 1 f
Bufflehead 8 8m
Common Goldeneye ~300
Barrow's Goldeneye ~150 15 oiled on Lagoon
Common Merganser 6 4m 2f
Bald Eagle 3 3 im
Cooper's Hawk 1
GYRFALCON 1 grey-morph
American Coot ~50
Sanderling ~150
Mew Gull ~60
Ring-billed Gull 4
Glaucous-winged Gull ~60
Western X Glaucous-winged ~40
Rock Dove 20
Northwestern Crow ~35
Common Raven 2 W end, Lagoon
Black-capped Chickadee 2
Chestnut-backed Chickadee 3
European Starling 5
Spotted Towhee 4 3m 1f
Fox Sparrow 2 1 'pied', 1 normal Sooty
Song Sparrow 5
HARRIS'S SPARROW 1 Basic 1
Dark-eyed Junco 8 Oregon-type
Red-winged Blackbird ~15
House Sparrow 4

Cheers

Michael Price A brave world, Sir,
Vancouver BC Canada full of religion, knavery and change;
mprice at mindlink.net we shall shortly see better days.
Aphra Behn (1640-1689)