Hello, all.

I think you've heard this repeatedly from the Vancouver area rare
bird alert, but this is up close and personal. Netta and I visited BC
this weekend, and this afternoon we spent several hours (1-3 pm) at
the end of 72nd St. on Boundary Bay, east of Vancouver. When we
arrived on the dike, we could see people with spotting scopes and
humongous telephoto lenses to the east of the end of the road, and
there we went. There were 5 Snowy Owls in sight of one another, all
south of the dike and all easily accessible with some scrambling over
the logs and through the salt marsh. It was pretty dry, only got our
hiking boots damp, and we were able to approach all of the owls for
photos by digiscoping. Others had lenses ranging from 500-1000 mm,
but the owls were tame enough that shorter lenses would have done the
trick. The afternoon sun was fully on them, as we approached from the
bay side, and it was delightful! Many people were photographing and
watching them.

No one flushed any of the owls, and they flew only a few times while
we were there, once when two of them had a brief encounter, and the
other time when one just spontaneously looked around (I had it in my
scope), thought "I think I want a change of venue," and flew 50 yards
and settled on another log where it was just as photogenic. Sorry I
don't have a web site to post all the photos, as they varied from a
lightly barred probable adult female or subadult male to a very dark
immature. One person said she had seen a "pure white" one a few days
earlier, presumably an adult male. Only one of the five was the
heavily barred first-year type that looks dark with a white face.
There are certainly many more of them along the levee, as people had
been seeing 10 or in the stretch between 64th and 72nd. There were
also untold thousands of water birds out on the bay - Dunlins, Black-
bellied Plovers, ducks, and large gulls in a mind-boggling numbers.
Harriers, red-tails, rough-legs, eagles, and a Short-eared Owl for
any raptorphiles who weren't satisfied with the snowies. Sadly, the
Fraser River delta is becoming more and more developed, and now huge
greenhouses are taking up a lot of the space that was open. I don't
think the greenhouses support much of an avifauna. Thank goodness the
bay itself is still sacrosanct, and the dike allows us all to enjoy
it. One of the highlights was watching a Great Blue Heron stalk and
capture voles. I suspect this species is just as significant a vole
predator as the harriers, red-tails, short-ears, etc.

We also went to Squamish, north of Vancouver, where there is said to
be an impressive concentration of Bald Eagles. Sometimes several
hundred are seen there in a day (even several thousand along the
length of the river), but we saw only about 30 at the eagle
observation site, a bit disappointing but with a few good photo ops
with the scope. The chum salmon were long dead, but they said the
eagles continue to feed on them for several months, through the end
of January! Whoo-eee. This has to be sufficient proof that most birds
don't have a sense of smell.

Reifel Refuge had about a million Mallards. I remember Reifel from
the 60s, when there was a great diversity of waterfowl there. Now,
statistically speaking, there are only Mallards. We saw one Wood
Duck, an obvious escapee Mandarin Duck, and a few American Wigeon and
Lesser Scaup within the dikes, more wigeons, pintails, and g-w teals
outside and large flocks of Snow Geese and swans in the distance. The
Mallards, to us, were sort of disgusting, as you have to watch your
footing everywhere to avoid stepping on them, and everywhere you go
they come flying in to you. People go there and take their kids to
feed the birds (as well as the Mallards and Rock Pigeons, there are
literally hundreds of Black-capped Chickadees, a density far higher
than normally occurs in nature, and numbers of several kinds of
sparrows, towhees, and redwings), and I know it gives many people
great joy. It's also doing an important job protecting the habitat
around the dike and the birds that use it, but the "refuge" has
become a city park out in the farmland. It's not the birding
experience it used to be.

After the Snowy Owls, our biggest pleasure was walking a long way
down Robson Street in Vancouver Saturday evening. With all the
Christmas cheer, it is a great experience. Vancouver is much more
cosmopolitan than Seattle, and we heard foreign languages about as
much as English as we walked around and checked out the wonderful
shops and restaurants there.

The wait on I-5 coming from BC to Washington was only about a half
hour, much less going the other way yesterday morning. For people
living in northwest Washington, this is a closer place to see a lot
of Snowy Owls than Ocean Shores. But if you prefer a wilder
experience, Ocean Shores is doubtless better.

-----
Dennis Paulson & Netta Smith
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115
206-528-1382

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