On Sunday morning I got up and headed down to Boundary Bay to see what was happenin'. It was a fairly nice day and I decided that I would try experimenting with some of the settings on my camera.

For whatever reason, most of my experiments from that morning turned out blurry and unusable. Here's one of the less-blurry ones, showing what the bay was looking like that day. I like this one because of all of the different-sized birds.

While I was at the bay, I encountered a group of birders. I decided to stick around with them and see what I could learn. I'd been seeing people posting stuff on the web about all of the birds they found, and I thought my birding skills could use some improvement. So I watched 'em and listened and learned some about what real birders do. It was birder school for your pal Tom.

When I joined them, they had just started to scan a group of Canada Geese on the upland side of the dyke. This was a little curious, as Canada Geese are pretty common up here. But hey, they were checking out the geese, so I did, too. It was a bunch of Canada Geese.

Except then one of the birders says, "Cackling Goose". So I looked harder at the geese, looking for a Cackling (which is essentially a small version of the Canada). I didn't see anything that looked Cackling to me, but a couple of other birders confirm Cackling. I tried taking some photos of the bird that I think they were saying was Cackling, but even in the photo it looks as big as a Canada. My first lesson seems to be that I need to learn to judge size better.

And then one exclaims "Greater White-fronted". I know that there is a species called Greater White-fonted Goose, but I don't know what it looks like. Again, I try following the description of this goose's location, but I don't see anything there but Canadas. Soon, the other birders are confirming Greater White-fronted, and then they spot another one. And I just see a flock of Canada. I've now found out that I'm in need of identification skills.

Some of the birders decide to head over to the Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary, which is about ten or fifteen minutes' drive away. I decide to go over there, too, and see what else I can learn.

I arrived at Reifel, but none of the birders were there. I had seen at least one of them turn off onto 72nd street, and thought that maybe they had decided to go somewhere else. Oh, well..at least I had learned a bit and I ended up at a fairly birdy place.

I looked in the slough to the east of the parking lot, where normally there are just a bunch of Mallards. True to form, there were plenty of Mallards there, but there were also a couple of other birds. One was this Dowitcher. It's an adult bird in nonbreeding plumage, and I think it's a Short-billed Dowitcher, not a Long-billed...but I'm not certain.

Then I noticed the birders arriving. They met up behind their second vehicle and I walked over and asked if I could tag along with them. They assented, and introduced themselves as George, Carlo, and Ilya. We went into the refuge, and checked the log book near the entrance. There had been some Mountain Chickadees seen there, and they became our target.

We went right past Fuller's Slough and the feeders near there, heading west towards the foreshore. At the first branch in the path, my companions stopped and were looking into trees where I hadn't noticed anything. After a few moments, though, I found some motion. Bringing my binoculars to bear, I found what they were looking at. There were several Yellow-rumped Warblers in the trees here. Watching for a few minutes, it began to seem like the trees were teeming with them. They were everywhere I looked. How could I not have noticed them at first?

I set down my tripod and got some photos of these beauties. Here's one of them.

We stopped many times, because we were checking every chickadee we saw to see if it was a Mountain. And we saw a lot of chickadees--the Black-capped Chickadee is one of the more common birds around here. The Mountain Chickadee looks a bit like a Black-capped, except it has a white stripe over top of the eye. We saw no stripes on our chickadees.

At one of our frequent stops, though, we noticed some House Finches and a Golden-crowned Sparrow. Here's the Golden-crowned.

We headed out towards the tower on the middle dyke, seeing lots of Black-cappeds and Red-winged Blackbirds and sparrows. We searched around the tower for a while, as the Mountains had been seen near there. Then we decided to head out along the west dyke, which is the one closest to the foreshore.

Just a little ways up the dyke, the birders all react to a sound. My hearing is pretty bad, so I didn't really notice anything, but the birders knew that it was a chickadee, it didn't sound exactly like a Black-capped, and it was headed straight at us. It was a Mountain Chickadee, and it passed by us and lit upon a tree branch that we had just passed.

The birders were busy agreeing it was a Mountain as I plopped my tripod down, and started working the head to point the camera at the chickadee. I got the camera pointed in the right direction and tried to get it to focus. I just wasn't fast enough, and the chickadee flew off before I got a picture. Chickadees are like that; they don't usually stay in one place for long.

We tried to relocate the chickadee for a while, but came up empty-handed. Anyhow, my companions were quite satisfied, as Mountain Chickadee isn't a bird that one gets to see often in the area.

It was getting a little late, so the group decided to head back out. Along the way back to the entrance, they found a Ruby-crowned Kinglet, and tried to point it out to me, but I didn't see it.

On the other hand, back at Fuller's Slough, the resident Black-crowned Night-heron was out in the open. This generated enough interest that I was able to set up my camera, put on the teleconverter, and take a number of shots, all while my group was still rapt. Here's a couple of photos of the Night-heron.

When we got back to the gate, George entered our sightings into the log book, and we said our goodbyes. I hung around the gate as they left because I saw a rooster strutting about. This was a fine specimen, with gorgeous, deep color on him. I took a bunch of portraits.

I've heard this guy around the entrance to the refuge before, and caught a glimpse of him once, but this was the first time I'd gotten him in the open long enough to get photos...and not only was he in the open, but he was in bright sunlight. I counted myself lucky.

I really hadn't gotten too many photos in during the day, but I had gotten some good subjects, so I was happy. However, I did really want to get a photo of the Mountain Chickadee, so as I drove home, I plotted to return to Reifel soon.

Cock-a-doodle-doo,
Tom