Hi folks,

Just got back from the Kamloops area, where a group of us were
observing the sockeye salmon return to the Adams River. This, the
premier return of the Fraser River sockeye stocks, is pretty darned
impressive - a million red fish in the clear waters above Shuswap
Lake!!

Didn't have time to do a lot of birding yesterday, but did notice a few
birds among the hundreds of school kids and sight-seers that had
congregated to welcome back the salmon. A colleague asked me
why we can't have this many fish return to the Cedar River for the
Lake Washington sockeye run, and I supposed that we could have
had we protected our watershed from development as well as had
the Province and federal governments and the Shuswap Nation...

Anyway, on the 'round trip' from Kamloops to the Adams River,
yesterday 16 October, I saw :

Tundra Swans
Canada Goose - B.c. moffitti
Mallard
'small' ducks - at a distance
Common Merganser
Ring-billed Gulls - abundant
California Gulls - common
Herring Gulls - several
Bald Eagle
Red-tailed Hawk
Red-shafted Flicker
Raven
Crow
Black-billed Magpie
Steller's Jay
Golden-crowned Kinglet
Winter Wren
Black-capped Chickadee
Starlings
Rock doves
House Sparrow - Kamloops

Also saw red squirrels -- Tamiasciurus hudsonicus. Kind of like our
Chickarees (T. douglasii) but redder, with a white belly

Other interesting sightings were a Merlin at Hope, BC on the evening
of Wednesday the 14th. Thursday afternoon, while driving up the
Thompson R. above Spences Bridge, we saw a 2nd-year Bald Eagle
trying to catch an immature Goldeneye. The eagle made a dozen-
and-a-half attempts at the duck, which kept diving. Just when it
looked like the duck couldn't dive any longer, the eagle gave up and
perched in a streamside Ponderosa pine while the goldeneye escaped
down-river with just the tip of its bill above water....

Jon. Anderson
Olympia, Washington
festuca at olywa.net