[yet] More November birding

Saturday morning is birding morning here in Nakusp. Through the week there is little time to see anything before school and straight after school one needs to be motivated as the sun is going down by about 4-30.

Saturday morning starts about 8am and the schedule roughly is as follows; Kuskanax River mouth, Sewerage Ponds [where would we be without them?], Scanning the Lake from a variety of positions along the Nakusp water front, Spicer's Farm, Crescent Bay and Brouse Loop Roads, [if time permits Summit and Box Lakes] and then a cruise around town, in particular checking out the feeding stations of note.

Now, believe it or not, no matter how many times you do this there is always the serious risk of discovering something new, rare, uncommon or interesting or most of the above. Today's effort produced new birds for my Nakusp list; Mountain Chickadee and Northern Pygmy Owl. It allowed me to see White-throated Sparrow, my first winter record for the season. It produced a nice Hooded Merganser on Arrow Lake itself; this merganser usually a little more happier on smaller bodies of water. And we saw a Dipper not dipping but swimming in the shallows of the Lake near Spicer's Farm.

Female Evening Grosbeak

These feeders around town I'm going to have to seriously start to haunt so i can get some final happy snaps of some of the common bird species. One feeder in particular had Collared Doves, Steller's Jay, Evening Grosbeaks, Juncos, House Finch, Nuthatch, Three species of Chickadee - Black-capped, Chestnut-backed and Mountain plus American Goldfinches. Quite a reasonable list.

Here is my list for Saturday morning past – 17 Nov

C Loon

W Grebe

H Grebe

Bufflehead

C Goldeneye

Scaup spp

Canada Goose

Poss. Cackling Goose

C Merganser

H Merganser

Mallard

A Wigeon

RT Hawk

RL Hawk

Herring Gull

C Dove

NP Owl

N Flicker

A Crow

Raven

Stellers Jay

P Wren

M Wren

GC Kinglet

RB Nuthatch

M Chickadee

BC Chickadee

CB Chickadee

Dipper

House Finch

A Goldfinch

Evening Grosbeak

DE Junco

White-throated Sparrow

Song Sparrow

Starling

Snow covered Mountain Ash tree on the Nakusp water front

Some of the beaver ponds between New Denver and Kaslo have started to ice up

Beaver Ponds

Beaver Lodge

Sunday saw the return of Sunday drives and we made Kaslo and Ainsworth Hot Springs our destination. It is strange for us [still] to be time travelers; departing Nakusp in the Fall and within an hour coming face to face with winter. Snow, while not falling had fallen and was heaped up on road sides and smaller upland lakes were confidently beginning to ice. Birds, clearly afraid of winter were scarce. A few Pine Grosbeaks feeding on a road were perhaps the highlights. At Kalso it was cold and windy - allegedly 3 degrees Celcius however with the wind in your face it seemed considerably cooler. An adult Mew Gull in winter plumage, its small size, clear yellow legs and thin yellow bill distinguishing it from other spp was seen well on the Kaslo waterfront.

Bench overlooking Arrow Lake

Our front yard - post snow fall

Earlier this week we saw our first winter snow in Nakusp. We awoke to a decent covering and the town looked beautiful in an English xmas card kind of way. I woke the kids because i wanted to witness their response and their comments were great, 'Happy Snow day Dad!' from Tom and from Matt a semi serious, 'Am I dreaming?' By the afternoon the temperature had risen and the snow had gone.

Canada Geese pretending to be Snow geese - a view from the school windows

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