The 16th was a Sunday and the plan for the morning was to go around Blackie Spit with Ilya. I'd been to Blackie Spit before, but Ilya really knew the park and had been offering to show me some of its local specialities for quite some time. I had finally gotten my act together to set a date, and the date had arrived.

Our main target bird was the Long-billed Curlew. Our time at the spit started and ended with rain, but for most of the time that we were out, the rain held off. However, it was still a cold and windy day. Heck, even the Western Meadowlarks found it windy. There was a pair of them that popped by to see us.

Looking over the fence near where the meadowlark was, and over Farm Slough, we found three Marbled Godwits hanging out with some Long-billed Dowitchers and Greater Yellowlegs.

But then the godwits were gone, flying over closer to the gardens near where the curlew had landed.

We continued on over to the channel near Dunsmuir Gardens. A flight of six eagles flew over us. Here's one, who looks to be two or three years old.

Well, he could, but that was only because it was frozen.

We came to the part of the trail closest to the rail trestle, and looked out over the gate at a small lump of land where the Marbled Godwits and Long-billed Curlew were, surrounded by a mass of dabbling ducks. I took some photos, but the curlew was facing away from us and kept his head down, so I didn't get any good shots. Just then, though, fortune smiled on us, and something caused the birds to become alert. The godwits and curlew popped their heads up, and I got a few photos of them. Here's two of the shots that show the bill on both curlew and godwit. The curlew, in the back, has a downward-curling bill, while the godwit, in front, has a more straight bill.

The heron didn't really flush as we were walking towards him; he just sort of trundled off away from us. Eventually we did get close enough that he took flight, however.

The heron had been leaving tracks in the fresh snow.

I find rabbit tracks quite interesting, because the impression left by the two front feet are one-behind-the-other, not one-beside-the-other. They must balance like a tripod with an extra leg in the center.

There were some robins and a trio of Cedar Waxwings eating berries from a nearby tree. Ilya spotted an adult eagle in a conifer a little ways away and we watched an immature come in and land underneath him.

We searched for sparrows and found Golden-crowned, Fox, Song, Spotted Towhee, and Dark-eyed Junco. I got a few photos of them but nothing really worth showing. I did spend some more time on the robins and waxwings, though. Here's a robin, looking pretty dapper.

Both the robins and the waxwings were showing pretty vivid color. One of our last birds in the gardens was a Winter Wren, who was unfortunately too quick for me to get a photo of. I haven't ever gotten a good photo of a Winter Wren.

We left the gardens and headed towards the pier on the exposed side of the spit, and the beach in front of some houses nearby. On the way I took a few more photos of the godwits and curlew, and some of another blue heron that was near the path. A Sharp-shinned Hawk flew by in the distance, and we chased another Winter Wren for a little while.

(For you out-of-towners, Blackie Spit is in Crescent Beach, which is the name of a community in a town called White Rock, which itself is in the city of Surrey. You'll need some of that information to make sense of the parenthetical nonsense in the following paragraph.)

Ilya and I arrived at the pier, and found a white Rock Dove who was wearing a very pretty green anklet. .(Or should that be a White Rock dove? Or a white White Rock rock dove? And what would we say happened if it took a dive?)

also got a few distant photos of a Common Goldeneye.

We headed up the beach to the bend to set up the scope and look for Long-tailed Ducks. Along the way, Ilya found a Brown Creeper and a Golden-crowned Kinglet in a tree. It was too dark under the tree to get good photos, though. A few paces later, there were two eagles in a tree right beside a house; they took off and flew away, one of them passing quite near us.

Back at the beach, we didn't find any Long-tailed Ducks. However, there were some White-winged Scoters, Surf Scoters, and Bufflehead at a medium range. They were hard to get decent photos of, but here's one of a White-winged Scoter playing with its food.

There were also two Black-bellied Plovers, two Sanderlings, and a Kildeer.

The Black-bellied Plover is bigger than the Dunlin, but has a much shorter bill.

It was now 1:00 (we had started around 9:15) and we decided to head back to the car. Along the way, we found the following gull, which we surmised was a Western Gull. Later we showed the photographs to people more experienced with gulls and got confirmation of our assessment. Westerns are not the most common of gulls around these parts.

The Merlin is a type of small falcon; it's about 25 cm. (10 in.) long. It's not the smallest of North American falcons, though—that honor goes to the American Kestrel, which averages about 3 cm. shorter.

Anyhow, despite the frigid weather, or perhaps because of it, we had an excellent morning of birding. (I think having Ilya as my tour guide helped quite a bit, too.) Rather than braving the elements again, I spent the rest of the afternoon warming up and sorting through my photos.

Wondering if there's a falcon called Morgana,
Tom