Hi Tweets,

A few quick notes.

A friend, Mark Wynja, tells me that the Alternate-plumaged male v-nigra race
COMMON EIDER Somateria mollissima is still being seen in off the Iona
Jetties in Richmond in company with a large mixed-scoter flock--likely the
same scoter flock which has vacated Burrard Inlet sites such as English Bay,
Bayswater Beach and the W side of Stanley Park. Incidentally, the eider
shows bicolored tertials, basal half white, outer half dusky, instead of
full white. Dennis Paulson (pers. comm.) says this is a feature of Alternate
2 birds (a subadult male, in other words) rather than a definitive racial
difference. I don't know if it's gonna stick around for another
molt-sequence or leave with the scoters, I'd guess sometime in late March to
mid-April if the latter.

A YELLOW-BILLED LOON (YBLO) Gavia adamsii in pre-Alternate molt (definitive
Alt back-pattern about 50% molted in, otherwise still Basic) was about 100
meters off the outer walkway of the Second Beach Pool on the W side of
Stanley Park. I don't think this is the same YBLO as a couple weeks before;
the definitive Alt back-pattern is too advanced, and the bill shape is more
like a large adult bill. Last seen headed inbound toward English Bay about
200 meters out. About twice as far out in the same location was a relatively
large flock (~75 birds) of mostly male Long-tailed Ducks Clangula hyemalis
noisily displaying to a few females, the males 'ang-angelik' calls easily
audible. Wotta spectacular duck!

The female TUFTED DUCK Aythya fuligula was in the NE 'Scaup Bay' section of
Lost Lagoon along the N side about 100 meters W of the historical marker,
but the male was not present at all.

Granville Clint, Vancouver BC's downtown male Peale's Peregrine Falcon Falco
peregrinus, was having a heckuva good time early this evening. I checked his
usual perch midway up the N side of the Granville 2000 Building at the N end
of Granville Street. No dice: lots of fresh peregrine poop, but no bird. I
hung around on the E walkway on Canada Place just to the W of the Granville
Building, as he often comes swooping in to perch about that time of day. No
luck. Well, sometimes he likes to sit atop the masts from which the Canada
Place roof is suspended (when all's said and done, CP is basically a nothing
but a big tent). Bingo. The little twerp had been sitting not twenty meters
away on top of the nearest mast, no doubt smirking behind his primaries at
the fool looking everywhere but up. I watched him cleaning his talons with
his beak (imagine cleaning your feet with your mouth. Bleahh.)--well, it's
important: the last thing a raptor needs is an infected foot.

Then the fun began. A bunch of gulls starts to give Clint a hard time. Three
seconds later, god knows how, he's leapt off the mast, gained a ton of
height, and is stooping on one of them. *Barely* misses. Traumatised gull
flles for its life. Three life-or-death stoops later, he's back at his perch
and the annual brick production by coastal gulls has gone up another ten
percent. Some of the gulls land on the water below (it's a cruise ship berth
in summer; odds and sods from old rustbucket Polish trawlers to blocky naval
ships that look like sea-going pick-up trucks on goodwill visits use it the
rest of the year). An eagle comes over to check out the ruckus, figures it
might as well try to pick off a gull since it's there, heads down to the
gulls. Clint decides not to share his toys, and does a series of powerful
stoops on the eagle, screaming and 'kek-kek'ing' his head off each time. The
eagle, an adult Bald Eagle Haliaeetus leucocephalus, BTW, has to roll over
and present Clint with a faceful of talons even bigger than his, to fend off
each stoop.

Now, the promenade deck along the E side of Canada Place is about 25-30
meters above the water, so all this is happening *below* me. Eventually the
eagle decides, aw screw it, who needs the aggro, and flies off; Clint comes
back to his mast and preens for a while while I show this lovely adult
Peale's Peregrine to a Brit tourist (who's actually more impressed by the
eagle flying six feet past his nose a few minutes before than a close-up
look at the falcon harassing the same eagle, a reminder that we're very
spoiled in Vancouver BC at the winter abundance of Bald Eagles in and around
the city). I last saw Clint against the cold yellowish sky of sunset, a
black shape, big-headed, big-shouldered, tapering down to a blunt point. A
few minutes later, as I was unlocking my bike to head home, I spotted him
arrowing in straight, swift flight to the SE--on who-knows-what
errand?--probably toward the old Sun Building on Pender St. and I wondered
what it must be like for his prey: a dark silhouetted teardrop-shaped dot
rapidly expanding into a lethal yellow flower of talons. Boom. Lights out.

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)