Saturday the weather forecasts were all predicting showers. Due to the wet weather we'd been having, it'd been a week since I had gotten out, so I was tired of waiting for a sunny day and went out birding in the afternoons anyway. I had good luck with the weather, and wasn't rained on very much.

I headed up to Pitt Meadows with three targets in mind: American Kestrel, Turkey Vulture, and Townsend's Solitaire. All of them would be lifers. I was on the Mary Hill Bypass, about halfway to the Pitt, when I saw something large up in the sky. This was no bird, though; it was substantially larger than that. It was an airship, and I pulled over to take some photos of it.

After a minute or so, it had floated far enough away that it was very small in the frame, so I headed back towards Pitt Meadows. A fellow named Roger had reported that there was a kestrel that frequents Thompson Road, so I decided to try there first.

The problem with that was that none of my maps covers the north (i.e., interesting) part of Pitt Meadows, and I wasn't familiar with Thompson Road. So I was thinking that I'd have to drive around a bit to find it. I headed over to Rannie Road by my usual route, which is along McNeil. I was a little surprised to find that McNeil changes its name to Thompson where it meets Rannie...or whatever Rannie is called there. That was easy.

Finding the kestrel was just as easy. I drove for about 20 seconds down Thompson, and there on the wire beside the road is the bird. I pull over onto the muddy shoulder, got out with my camera, and took a few overexposed photos...I had metered my exposure on the bird, and the sky was really bright compared to that. The kestrel took off, and I got a couple of flight photos, but they were a little washed out. Here's the best of them.

I'd never been on Thompson before. At this part of the road, there is a tree farm on both sides. The kestrel lit on one of the trees of the tree farm, north of the road, right on the top of the tree. I got some more long-distance shots, and as I was pulling my tripod out of my trunk, he took off. I couldn't relocate him right away.

After about ten minutes, though, I caught sight of him flying, now south of the road. He flew behind the tree-farm building, and I walked to where I figure he went, but again I couldn't find him. Another fifteen minutes or so of waiting yielded no more kestrel sightings.

So I decided to head farther down Thompson, to take photos of some sheep that I could see in a field by the road. The poor adult beast here had some sticks stuck in her wool.

He paused, looking around again. Then he started bleating loudly and insistently, sounding more desperate and a little panicky.

After a short while, I heard an adult towards the back of the field respond with about four baaaas. Obviously the little guy heard as well, for he went bounding off in the direction those baaaas came from.

All the time I was shooting at the farm, I kept my eye out for the kestrel, but it didn't reappear. I finally decided to give up on the little bird and head up towards Grant Narrows. As soon as I got Rannie Road and started going north, though, some movement to my left catches my eye. A bird had come up and matched speeds with my car...and it was the kestrel. Mischievious little guy!

I pull over as he lands on the wire and I finally get some decent photos of him. He is one gorgeous little falcon.

The other one was a bit of an odd beast. He seemed quite desperate for company, for someone to run with or play with. I told him to come closer, and he came a little closer to me. That seemed pretty neat, so I told him to go, and he moved a little further away.

At this point I was wondering if this horse was really understanding me, and if so, how much he understood. So on a lark I told him to roll over and play dead.

In the field behind the horses, pretty far away, there were a couple of Sandhill Cranes. Perhaps they were nesting out there; it was crane nesting season.

That was all that was going on at this stop, so I headed up the road a little farther to a place where a couple of paths that I'd never explored lead into the polder. I grabbed my camera and headed west. A Northern Flicker flushed from beside the path and before I could photograph it, it flushed again because of someone coming up the path towards me.

The person passed and I noticed some mushrooms growing out of a tree beside the path. I found an angle on them with a good dark blue mountain in the background.

Well, he's a neat little critter, but he really should clean his fur more often. It looks all matted and muddy. As I was standing there wondering about his grooming habits, he slipped into the water with his very ugly catch of the day

I mean it, too: neither that mink nor his fish is going to win any beauty contests anytime soon.

As the mink was paddling off to his lair, the sun reappeared for a brief moment.

As that moment passed, I gathered my wits, realizing that sun plus showers equals rainbow. I turn around to look behind me, and sure enough, there's a rainbow. The light is strong enough that it's a double.

With the osprey flying off, I headed back down the path towards my car. Soon I found myself beside a swarm of warblers. They were Yellow-rumped Warblers, and there seem to be about eight or nine of them.

There are two main subspecies of Yellow-rumped Warblers, called Audubon's and Myrtle. They differ in several respects, but the most obvious field mark for telling them apart is the color of the chin patch, which is yellow in Audubon's and white in Myrtle. The difference is most dramatic in adult males.

Here's one of my swarm, clearly an adult male Audubon's.

For comparison, here's a handsome adult male Myrtle that I caught a little ways down the trail.

From that same group, here's a first-winter (i.e. juvenile) Audubon's.

That bird must be ready to molt, or already molting. April is about the latest that one sees a Yellow-rumped in that plumage.

As I got back to the end of the trail near the road, there were about three Ruby-crowned Kinglets in the trees on the side of the path. I watched them only long enough to verify that they were kinglets and not vireos. Leaving the kinglets, I almost stepped on a slug making its way across the trail.

In the trees between the canoe launch and the boat launch, there were a few more Ruby-crowned Kinglets. They had their crowns showing and were chasing each other around quite a bit. They were sometimes raising their crowns all the way up, but sadly I wasn't able to get a photo of that. Here's one of them, anyway.

On the ground near these trees were some fresh White-crowned Sparrows.

It's nice to see their bold white and black stripes as they hop around.

I walked north to the viewing platform, hoping to find the solitaire, but all I saw were the ever-present Red-winged Blackbirds, and the local Osprey. I turned back as it was getting dark, and a heavy shower broke right before I got back to the gate. I hurried up and took shelter at the snack bar across from the boat launch.

After the shower, I went over to the boat launch one more time, and saw the flickers, kinglets, and sparrows, but no solitaire. I happened to look down, and found a Great Blue Heron right below me.

I'd had good luck with Great Blues lately.

I took a few more photos of flickers, as one of them foraged with the sparrows on the lawn. Then I turned my attention to the canoe racks at the canoe rental place.

That was the end of my day out, and even though I only got one of my targets, I was quite happy about all the different things I saw.

Next time, I'll search another location for a Townsend's Solitaire.

Wondering if the mink was wondering about my grooming habits,
Tom