Subject: [Tweeters] BC yesterday - Bluetail, Brambling and Fir Island Gyr
Date: Jan 22 14:17:03 2013
From: Ryan Shaw - rtshaw80 at hotmail.com



Greetings all,

Yesterday I headed up to the rarity extravagansa known as British Columbia with Bill Shelmerdine.

We started out at Queens Park in New Westminster - arriving at near first light, 7:45AM. It was quite foggy but Bill ended up finding the bird within 15 minutes of our arrival. We had about 30 minutes with the bird without any other observers until a few fellow Washingtonians showed up.

While the dense fog and dreary conditions was not great for photography, I did manage to get some grainy photos, and a few 30 second video clips of the bird actively preening - you can view that at my flickr site:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shyalbatross/

We headed for the Brambling location in Vancouver; the alley between 17th Ave and 18th Ave east of Laurel Street.

We ended up seeing the Brambling right away - and it too posed for photos.

We ended our stay in Canada in Delta along the dike access between 72nd and 64th street. Here we counted 18 Snowy Owls despite the very dense fot. 6 of the Snowy Owls were out on the drift wood along the dike, and 12 were sitting on top of the roofs of the nearby greenhouse buildings between the two streets.

Swinging through Fir Island on the way home, we found the flock of birders looking at the Gyrfalcon, so that helped us out greatly!

Cheers and good birding,

Ryan Shaw
Tacoma
rtshaw80 at hotmail.com