On Saturday the 5th of November, the weather was foul: cold and rainy. In spite of that, I went to West Vancouver to see if I could find a duck that had been seen there. The duck was a King Eider, an infrequent visitor to these parts.

I started out in the drizzle at Dundarave Pier, where the Eider had first been spotted. From the pier, I could see a largish flock of Surf Scoters (maybe 1000 birds) to the east, around 22nd Street, and a few other closer ducks near the seawall. The Eider had been seen fraternizing with Surf Scoters, so I walked towards the scoter flock.

Along the way I stopped to take pictures of the closer ducks. The first one was a female Harlequin Duck.

The rain had now started to come down in earnest, but I continued east. My next subject was a flotilla of male Barrow's Goldeneyes

It was alternating between heavy drizzle and dumping buckets, and with no Eider in sight, I headed back westward to Dundarave and my car. I stopped to take a few more photos of Harlequins on the way.

Back at the car, I decided on going to Klootchman Park. I'd never been to Klootchman Park before, but it recently hit my radar when I saw a post describing it as a good location to find Surfbirds. The Surfbirds supposedly like to congregate on the Grebe Islets, and Klootchman affords good views of the islets.

But before going on to Klootchman Park, I took a detour to Park Royal. Park Royal isn't a park at all; it's a shopping mall. Rain had soaked through the gloves I had been wearing and my hands had gotten very cold; I was hoping to acquire a better pair of gloves. I poked around in an outdoor sports store and found some gloves, and then got a large coffee for good measure. Thus armed, I drove west to Klootchman. When I got there I noticed a suspicious silver station wagon parked in one of the two parking spots; I took the other spot and headed down the trail.

And down it was; Klootchman Park, it turns out, goes down a cliff. When I arrived at the bottom, I took a left turn and ended up on a small rock outcropping. There weren't too many birds around, but I could see what must be one of the Grebe Islets. It didn't seem to have much on it except gulls, though.

I knew that I had seen only one islet, and that there were supposed to be more than one of them. That meant that there must be some other place in the park from which to view the islets, and I retraced my steps to try to find this other viewpoint. I discovered that where I had turned left, one could also turn right. As I proceeded that way, my earlier suspicions about the station wagon were confirmed. My pals Jeff and Ilya were on the trail. These fellows have been awful easy for me to find lately.

They told me that there was nary a Surfbird to be found, and rather than proceed to the Surfbird-less viewpoint, I went back up the cliff to the parking with them. They were going to check Caulfield again for the Eider, and I decided to follow them. Caulfield would be a new place for me, and new places tend to hold interesting surprises and photo-ops.

We reached Caulfield and parked. Ilya went ahead while Jeff and I checked out the shore from a trail to the side. We didn't find much, so we went to join Ilya. In the middle of this process I unfortunately decided to put my tripod back in the car; I had been carrying it all day and wanted to free myself of the weight. I say "unfortunately" because I ended up taking a lot of photos that could've benefitted from the tripod. Such is life, I guess.

Anyhow, at a little flat spot overlooking a cove, we found Ilya, along with Carlo (another pal of mine) and a birder named Meg (who I hadn't met before). They were all looking down at a flock of a few thousand Surf Scoters. But then again, I'm not great at estimating numbers in a large flock. Here's maybe half or a third of the flock...you can count for yourself.

(I played with the brightness levels of that photo in weird ways in Photoshop; it's not all that close to the original look of the photo.)

Here's another shot of some of them from later, when they were a bit more dispersed. This was the first time I had seen such a large flock of scoters, and it was pretty awesome.

They make a really cool call when they're about to run or fly.

Carlo and Meg had noticed a few scoters that lacked the white spot on the forehead, but otherwise had the appearance of adult males. Here's one of them.

There's a male coming-of-age ritual that Surf Scoters engage in; it involves head-butting a freshly-painted polar bear. Seems this guy skipped out on that ceremony. I'm surprised the other scoters even associate with him.

Between us and the funny scoter, a juvenile Red-necked Grebe popped up.

Finding no Eider amongst the scoters, we all decided to move on. Most of us elected to go to Dundarave one more time. I got there a little after Carlo, who I found hurrying back to his car saying that the scoters were around 22nd street, where I had seen them earlier. Carlo knew where to park so that we wouldn't have to walk as much, so I followed him there.

On the way down to the seawall from the street, we encountered George, another local birder, who said that he had just scanned the flock and found no Eider. That and the rain were enough for Carlo, who then left. I proceeded on down, and found a pair of male Barrow's right in front of the seawall as I arrived.

I noticed Jeff and Ilya had come at the flock from 25th Street, so I walked over to join them. We watched the scoters for a while, and they decided to go on to Kitsilano to see if they could find the Eider there. I stayed a little while longer to take a few more photos.

The scoters had an interesting behavior, A group of them would be swimming in the same direction, generally towards shore. There was some invisible line across the water. When each duck reached this line, it would dive. It was like a conveyor belt full of ducks headed my way, with each duck falling off the conveyor, going underwater, when it reached the end. They were probably diving when they sensed a school of fish or a certain depth of water. Here the ducks right at the front of the photo are diving. The rest will soon follow.

They would be my last subjects; I had considered heading over to Kits myself, but decided against it, as it was getting too dark.

So I spent the day without seeing the Eider, but had a great time getting soggy, freezing my fingertips, and watching the ducks.

Not letting the eider get me down,
Tom