|
On Sunday the 19th
I headed out to Iona in the early afternoon to walk the south
jetty in search of the McKay's Buntings and Snow Buntings that
had been reported there. I had gone there with the same plan the
day before, but had turned back because of bad weather. The weather
this time was better, but still not great..
I started by walking
out the pipe, all bundled up against the wind and cold. Before
I reached even the half-kilometer mark, a birder on a bike stopped
and told me that the buntings were out at the tip, and they had
been there for thirty minutes. I decided that I should hurry...I
knew that they tended to stay about five to ten minutes, from
previous reports. This meant that they were overdue to fly away.
I started walking really fast.
I didn't make it far.
after another quarter-klick or so, my brain kicks in and tells
me that I'm going to exhaust myself if I try to hurry the remaining
three-something kilometers out to the end. So I slow down, but
now I'm hot inside my jacket and I start peeling off my toque
and gloves, and I unzip my jacket. I dismount from the pipe at
the electrical shack, as I know I'm not going to be needing to
check both sides of the jetty. This reduces my headwind by a factor
of about three and it seems that suddenly a blustery, cold walk
has turned into a comfortably warm, pleasant one.
I notice a few scaup
out on the water and stop and take some photos. I think they were
Greater Scaup.
|
|
 |
|
I didn't really spend
much time observing them, as I was more concerned about getting
out to see those buntings.
So I trod on, and about
every kilometer I pass another birder (Colin being the only one
I recognize) who says that the McKays are still out at the tip.
I arrive at the tip a little after 2:00, over an hour after I
had set out. The McKays and their snowy buddies are right there
by the port-a-potty. A couple of birders named Tim and Mike are
also out there, watching them. Here's the dashing Mr. McKay.
|
|
 |
| And later,
on the same rock, this is his missus. She has darker coloration
on the wings but about the same on her face. |
|
 |
|
McKay's Buntings breed
on islands in the Bering Sea (mainly Hall and St. Matthew Islands),
and they are very rarely seen outside of there and the Bering
(northwest) coast of Alaska. Compared to most species, little
is known about them.
McKay's are closely
related to Snow Buntings, and sometimes hybridize with them. Snow
Buntings are more widespread and common.
Well, these McKay's
Buntings were travelling with three Snow Buntings, and there was
quite a lot of discussion about whether or not this female was
a pure McKay's or whether it was a McKay's–Snow hybrid. I
think the discussion ended up with her being a McKay's, but the
experts weren't completely certain.
Anyhow, I'll call her
a McKay's. Here's another shot of her, with more of her wing showing.
|
|
 |
| And here's
a shot of the pair of them. |
|
 |
| I hung around
for about an hour taking photos of the McKay's. I did remember to
get a few photos of the Snow Buntings, though. After all, they were
a lifer for me, too. I think this bird is a female, but winter Snow
Buntings are hard to tell apart. |
|
 |
| Here's a
photo of all five of the buntings. The male McKay's is the whitest
bird, second from the left, and the female McKay's is the rightmost
bird. The rest are Snows. |
|
 |
| The male
McKay's made a habit of taking the most prominent perch of the bunch,
and so I ended up with more photos of him than of the others. Here's
one more shot of him. |
|
 |
|
Around 3:00 I left
the tip, happy that I had gotten such good photo opportunities
with the buntings. I took a more leisurely approach on the way
back, looking around a lot. Just east of the tip, I saw a Peregrine
Falcon on a pile. He's a regular out there.
|
|
 |
|
Here he is again, with
two Double-crested Cormorants on the piles on his left.
|
|
 |
|
About halfway back,
I encountered a flock of Dunlin lining the rocks. Mainly, these
birds were resting, with their bills tucked into the feathers
of their back.
|
|
 |
|
I crawled down on the
rocks for some close-ups. Here's one where the birds have all
just perked up; something has caught their attention—perhaps
the Peregrine had just taken flight.
|
|
 |
|
Whatever it was, the
Dunlin were soon alarmed enough to take flight. They flew around
for a couple of minutes, the flock quickly changing color from
dark to light as the birds swerved, as Dunlin flocks do.
I managed to get a
pair of photos showing this color-changing effect as the flock
took off. Here's the first photo, showing a light-colored flock.
|
|
 |
| The second
photo was taken about 1/3 of a second later. The birds have all
tilted to their right—towards me—and now they're showing
dark. |
|
 |
| It's always
nice to watch Dunlin fly. Here's a shot of them further out. There's
quite a few birds, but I've seen much larger flocks than this. |
|
 |
|
The Dunlin were settling
back in on the rocks as I climbed back up to the road and continued
eastward. I soon encountered a male Barrow's Goldeneye, my third
lifer of the day. They're pretty fancy ducks. He got close enough
for some pretty good shots.
|
|
 |
|
They've been doing
some repair and reconstruction out on the jetty, and there was
a Cat alongside the road. This is a 320B L, one of the lightweights
of the medium-sized Cats. It's only got about half the power of
the 345B L that I got photos of in November.
|
|
 |
|
The top parts of some
of the extra bucket attachments they had lying around made an
interesting wave motif.
|
|
 |
|
Here's a closeup of
one of the places where a hydraulic cylinder attaches.
|
|
 |
|
It was now about 3:30
and the light near the water was turning golden: sunset comes
early in December. As I continued along, I spotted a number of
different ducks along the jetty.
First up was a male
Northern Pintail.
|
|
 |
| A little
further along I found my first female Barrow's Goldeneye. She looks
quite different than the black-and-white male. |
|
 |
| Next, a
pair of American Wigeon paddled by. |
|
 |
| And next,
I saw these longer, thin-billed ducks. The bill and the hairdo unmistakably
mark these as Red-breasted Mergansers, my fourth lifers of the day.
That's a female in the foreground and a male behind. |
|
 |
| Along the
road, I'm reminded that although I'm in a park, this is still "the
wild" for the birds. I find the wing of some bird that probably
fell prey to a raptor. I can't tell the species, but it's a small
wing, probably sparrow-sized. |
|
 |
| With about
a quarter or a half of a kilometer left, there was a small group
of those evil Canvasbacks taking a snooze a little ways from the
jetty. These were my last birds of the day. |
|
 |
| But the
light was now turning orange and pink, creating some very nice effects
on the mountains. I stayed around an extra fifteen minutes or so
to document some of these effects. Here are three of the better
shots. |
|
 |
| |
|
 |
| |
|
 |
|
I headed home happy,
having had great opportunities with a number of interesting subjects.
The McKay's photos ultimately turned out to be very popular, and
have appeared in a local newpaper, a naturalist newsletter, and
a couple of scientific repositories and journals. Not bad for
a short December afternoon.
Not swinging away,
Tom
|
|