A walk to school

delicate dead leaves with ice encrusted edges - good laptop background.....

patterns in puddled ice

frosty fungus

Last night the town froze and this morning the grass, the roads, our steps were covered with a thin, yet beautiful, veneer of ice. And as a continuing stranger in a strange land I allowed myself to appreciate the subtlety of the ice before the temperature rose to greater than zero. 

[maple] leaf skeleton embossed on the roadway

So here are a few photos taken on the way to school this morning.

Ice edges again

view from the front of the school

And a couple of birds taken near a feeder enroute to school.

male Evening Grosbeak

male Evening Grosbeak in a Xmas tree

Red-breasted Nuthatch

Red-breasted Nuthatch

Red-breasted Nuthatch

poor photo of a Mountain Chickadee

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[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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New Nakusp Bird

Jan Dion, one of the Teacher Aides at work came to my class today with a bird question. She described a bird she saw earlier in the morning at the water front. It was clear she had seen a pair of Snow Buntings.

Pair of feeding Snow Buntings on the Nakusp waterfront.

So almost straight after school [I had to pause briefly to enjoy a rare table tennis victory over Dom Raso] I went down to check them out. Pleased to say that they were still there and easy to find. I had seen my first ever Snow Buntings only a short while before so these were nearly as good as this was the first time I had seen them through binoculars.

One of the best of a lot of bad photos of a Bunting

A classic bad blurry Bunting - the little devils can move quite quickly!

As I said they were easy to see but quite difficult to photo as they ran around so fast and the afternoon was fast getting away and it was getting dark. At any rate attached are some snaps.

There is a Bear in there.........

There is a great little birding spot about 100 hundred metres away from our home here in Nakusp - Spicer's Farm. The Farm or simply 'Spicer's' as it is known, acts, to some degree, as a migrant trap. Birds are attracted by a small flourish of deciduous trees, a range of habitats in a small area and, best of all, a large compost pile. This pile, which is amply fed from leftover food from Overwaitea [the local grocery], provides heat and food for insects which, in turn, provide food for birds.

Now I've known for a while that the compost attracts not only birds. A few weeks ago there were a couple of large poo piles that could only have come from one source.

One Big Black Bear!

Today I saw the source -  a large black bear half way up a conifer. He was doing his best to sleep. Practicing, no doubt, for a lengthy winter slumber that must soon be starting. So our hello today was probably also our goodbye.   

More November Birding

LIFER - HARRIS'S SPARROW!

I’ve just had a great morning birding south of Nakusp; at the village of Fauquier to be precise [and a few places in between]. 

Gary Davidson had had the heads up the day before. A past student had phoned him up and reported a very interesting bird at a feeder at her house. Gary had quickly gone down south to Fauquier, saw the reported rare bird and while excitedly digesting its appearance, discovered another rare bird in the same yard! Now obviously excited about these ornithological oddities, he wrote emails announcing them to the Kootenay bird chat community and the BC interior bird chat community and was sitting on my couch waiting for me to arrive home from school on Friday afternoon…. Now, oblivious to all this excitement I went to the pub as one does on a Friday pm. So it seems I had my celebratory drinks early….

So Saturday morning, the temperature hovering at the zero mark, Gary gallantly and graciously agreeing to return, we made our way to Fauquier to try to rediscover the said rare birds. Now I was quietly confident although we had had a few times where these little twitches didn’t work out exactly as planned. Today worked wonderfully well. 

Anna's Humminbird

Anna's Hummingbird - just starting to reveal a little pink colour on the ear coverts

Again Anna's!!

We stopped at the assigned address and there was action at a feeder on the side of the house. Song Sparrows were the obvious dominant species. Black-capped Chickadees were also noisily attending as were some vocal Steller’s Jays. And then, on the ground, my target, a larger, paler sparrow with a pink bill. A Harris’s Sparrow -  a rare bird for the lower BC and a lifer for me. 

Harris's Sparrow

Harris's Sparrow

Harris's Sparrow showing breast pattern of a typical wintering bird

After a while enjoying this bird we went deeper into the same backyard for the other target.

And it, too, was astonishingly easy. Perched conspicuously on a vine bush was a Hummingbird. To be more precise an immature male Anna’s Hummingbird was perched there, occasionally flying to the nearby feeder by the back wall. Anna’s is a resident species further west in southern Vancouver Island and the adjacent areas of the extreme south western mainland and there are even a few hardy residents in Kelowna in the Okanagan Valley. But here in the wet and cold Kootenays they are practically unknown – so a great bird indeed.  It seems the bird has been in and around the village for at least a fortnight – visiting a series of hummer feeders that the locals had optimistically and fortuitously left up. Certainly without artificial feeding the bird would have died. Gary left instructions on how to rig up a heated feeder for the bird in the hope that the bird can last the winter with a little bit of local help. 

Cackling Geese in among the much larger Canada Geese

Tiny darker Cackling Geese

Strange Cackling goose with strange white 'head-dress'.

After trying to photograph the birds we went down to the nearby Golf course to count the Geese and see what else was aboot. There were a couple of Coot, some Mallard and a few Bufflehead, a pair of Flickers and the ubiquitous Song Sparrows in or adjacent to the Sewerage Ponds. A few Juncos darted into some bushes as we drove in. And on the course itself there were some 300 Canada Geese, one with a pretty amazing head dress of white feathers. But with them were six Cackling Geese – yet another uncommon species. 

For Jim Andrews - a Golf Course - Canada style!

A quick final cruise around the streets of Fauquier revealed a couple of Robins who were feasting on some bright red Mountain Ash berries but with them were some seventy five Bohemian Waxwings – my first for this winter.

Flock of Bohemian Waxwings

The trip down also revealed a Hairy Woodpecker – my first for my Nakusp list. The trip home revealed another new Nakusp bird – a Northern Pygmy Owl, that rudely flew away after I tried to take its picture.

Burton had a number of Mallard, Bufflehead, Common Mergansers and with them a lone male Hooded Merganser, both Goldeneyes – Common and Barrow’s, Canada Goose, a lone Tundra Swan and a lonely Herring Gull plus a dipper.   

Close-up of Anna's

Spicer’s Farm, our final destination before calling it a day, was quiet – a Pacific Wren or two and a few Golden-crowned Kinglets being the highlights.

Harris again because I can...

Snow Geese at Crescent Bay - from last weekend!

More Geese! - Greater White-fronted Goose [Geese] at Brouse - pic by Gary Davidson.

Gary Davidson's superior photo - yes it is the same Anna's Hummingbird!

 All in all a great morning!!
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Early November Birding

The email from Gary claimed ‘RBA – maybe’. RBA stands for, as every birder is aware, Rare Bird Alert. So he had my attention.  And the ‘maybe’ was not much of a negative.

Gary had dropped in to Burton as he drove to Kamloops as is his practice and this time he spotted something interesting, which has also been his practice. Distant gulls and distant swans and ‘maybe’ one of the gulls was a Sabine’s. 

Now a Sabine’s would, for me, be a lifer. Swans are rare on Arrow Lakes so always worth a little chase.

The email arrived on Friday afternoon and sadly with the rain and approaching dark it prevented me from an immediate half an hour drive to Burton.

But Saturday morning to Megan clucking, ‘You sad little nerd’, I left, by myself armed with bins, scopes etc [but no friends] into the darkness and rain that was Saturday in Nakusp. Bill Miller played on the stereo on the way down, appropriately enough ‘You are the Rain’ was the first track to play accompanying the splatter of drops on the windscreen and the beat of the wipers.

I checked the Burton Campground out first and saw a noisy pair of Bald Eagles. And  then on the lake the swans appeared, in the distance, gently honking and then they flew north – thirteen of them - and, as luck would have it, well beyond scope-able distance. 

A dreadful photo of a distant Glaucous Gull

ditto

So onto the bridge and the view of the lakes and the flats. The first bird seen save the customary Mallard and a flocks of Bufflehead, Common and Barrow’s Goldeneye and a couple of distant female Scaup was a single large Gull. Its wing tips were pure white, its legs red, its eye white. A Glaucous Gull. My first for this year.  My first for Nakusp. And only my second sighting in my life. A good bird in short. Post script - I didn't realise exactly how good as Gary has checked his thirty year records for the greater Nakusp area which reveals no records for Glaucous Gull - so a great bird indeed!!

Canada Geese, some pretty small, were on the flats and I tried to unsuccessfully to turn one or two into Cackling Geese but never quite managed it. Wigeon, Green-winged Teal, Common Merganser, Hooded Merganser were also about. 

And then a small Gull flew in the distance. Could this be a Sabine’s? Ah, no. First winter Boneaparte’s. Another good bird. Red winged Blackbird flew over. Flicker flicked by. Song Sparrow sung and I saw a few Dark eyed Juncos doing what Juncos do. 

Tundra Swans

Well satisfied by my morning I headed home and rounded a bend in the road and spied the swans. Luckily I could find a road down and got pretty close to them and identified them as Tundra Swans; only my second sighting and my first in the Nakusp area.

 

So a great morning out! 

Post script - Sunday i had the job of transporting my son and friends to Revelstoke for junk food and an aquatic centre visit to belatedly celebrate his 12th birthday. It was raining [although perhaps i don't need to emphasise that point too much..] At any rate it wasn't a birding day - I didn't even feel motivated to take binoculars. [I did take a couple of birding books however to browse through while the delights of cold climate indoor swimming were enjoyed.]

Snow Bunting - taken by Gary Davidson!

Now finally to the point; a lifer! A pair of Snow Buntings, seen repeatedly at the Ferry carpark on the Revelstoke side while waiting. Classic!