On the day after Blue Thursday, I went out to the treatment ponds at Iona after work. I wanted to get some properly-colored photos of fall shorebirds, and I didn't want to have to walk too much to do it. I was still tired from Thursday. I didn't have much light left in the day, so it was a fairly short visit, and I didn't see too many different species.

Of the four ponds or pond areas, the Southwest one seemed the best for my purposes. It's mainly full of water with a little bit of mud poking up in a few places. The Northwest pond also has some water in it, but not much, and the land parts are heavily vegetated, making for good hiding places for birds and not-so-good views for birders.

In the southwest corner of the southwest pond, I found a few shorebirds. First up was a peep, a juvenile Western Sandpiper.

The plumage pattern on him is distinctive, with the rufous (red/brown) "stripe" along the top of his folded wing, and the mainly white breast with just a little brown under his chin.

The next guy I found in the corner was this Lesser Yellowlegs. As you can see from the lighting on him, the sun has already gone quite far down.

Pointing my camera the other way (and thereby getting more light), I found a Short-billed Dowitcher.

Yes, I said short-billed. You should see the long-billed ones!

There were a bunch of peeps huddled together on one of the little "islands" in the pond, blanketing the ground. I believe that these are mainly Western Sandpipers, with a few Lesser Yellowlegs in the back.

Closer in, I caught the Yellowlegs and the Dowitcher together. These two birds are about the same size, which is one way that I know it's a Lesser Yellowlegs. A Greater Yellowlegs would be significantly bigger than the Dowitcher.

At the end of my time at the ponds, the water took on a blue-green color, reflecting the pastel of the sky. I shot a few last pictures of a yellowlegs as the sun descended behind the trees. The white breast of the yellowlegs looks almost orange here.

In retrospect, those last two shots would have probably been better if I had used my flash to fill in some light. I'll have to remember that for next time I'm out around sunset.

After I left the ponds, I went to the main part of Iona beach. About a minute after I got out of my car there, the sky was filled with swallows, mainly Barn Swallows. I'm guessing that lots of insects had flown upwards when the sun went down, and the swallows were up there feasting on them. Swallows were everywhere; it was amazing to watch. I just pointed my camera in random directions and took photos. Here's one, just to give you an idea of how dense the swarm was. This is a failry narrow-angle shot, and there seem to be about a hundred birds visible in it. So I would guess that the whole swarm had over a thousand birds.

The swarm moved around a little, going south a ways, and then back north, and a little bit up and down. A couple of times, they came near where I was, and there were swallows zooming all around me. Mainly they stayed above the outer ponds, though (the duck ponds near the parking lot), and their overall trend was rising.

The sun was now well and truly down, so I headed back home for another evening of sorting through photos, and getting ready to return to Boundary Bay on Saturday.

Toodle pip,
Tom