Hi Tweets,

I've often wondered where those large high-up westbound evening flights of
Lesser Scaup Aythya affinis from Lost Lagoon (usually 000's) are going and
speculating whether they go to Iona Island or another site further off, even
perhaps across the Strait of Georgia.

This evening I was sitting out a short sharp downpour in a coffee joint on
West Broadway when I saw against the broken sunset clouds, skein after skein
of scaup--about two thousand in all--flying first W than turning abruptly S
and flying nearly overhead. What they were doing was flying W along the S
side of Burrard Inlet, then S to cut across the base of the long peninsula
of Point Grey. On the other side? Iona Island and points south. Suggestive,
but not definitive until someone can track those birds somehow.

Interestingly, this is precisely the same place where Double-crested
Cormorants Phalacrocorax auritus, Great Blue Herons Ardea herodias and
Caspian Terns Sterna caspia cut off the intervening Point in their daily
trundlings between Burrard Inlet and the rest of the Fraser Delta to the S.

Hey, a little while after seeing the scaup head S, I noticed three *very*
large birds miles up and heading N; expecting eagles, I got out my bins to
check 'em out--they were so high I needed all of the 10x of my bins to see
they were Great Blue Herons in soar and glide mode. Someone's gonna get a
GBHE arrival tomorrow: they *had* to be migrants.

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)