Saturday, the 10th of June was a rare day. I got up in the morning with a plan of heading out to Grant Narrows Park in Pitt Meadows. A little after 9:00 I was out the door and on my way. Birders had recently reported a male American Redstart from the nature dyke at the park, and also had found a flycatcher who sang a funny tune. I was eager to see and hear these birds, the redstart in particular. I'd seen one before, and he was quite the dashing little guy.

Along the road to the park, I stopped a few times to investigate birds I noticed. One of these stops netted me a Brown-headed Cowbird.

Luckily I had eaten a little before going out, so that really didn't make me hungry.

Once I was at the park, I figured "when in Rome," and parked. (The full quotation being, "when in Rome, roam" or something like that.) I got my camera off the seat beside me and my tripod from the trunk, and headed off down the nature dyke.

After only about a minute, I found my first neat bird: a Band-tailed Pigeon. He was the first one I'd seen this year. He was perched on a snag with a bright overcast sky behind him, which would prevent me from getting a good portrait shot, so I decided on a shot that placed him in his context instead.

Speaking of being in Rome, ancient Romans would've called those slugs Arion rufus, if they'd read their Linnaeus. Here in B.C. we just call them Chocolate Arions.

I continued down the path for a few minutes, noting how nicely maintained it was. I hadn't been this way in almost a year, and in the meantime they'd trimmed back the bushes, removed or cut through some fallen trees, and repaired potholes in the trail. Walking the nature dyke last year used to involve a little climbing, ducking, pushing through vegetation, and careful footwork. This year it was a walk in the park.

I paused in my appreciation of the trail maintenance when I saw a flash of red up ahead. Zeroing in on the color, I found a Red-breasted Sapsucker on a small tree right next to the trail. I only got a few shots off before he shot off.

That was a pretty neat encounter; these sapsuckers are attractive birds.

Before I had a chance to even move, I noticed a couple of birds chasing each other in the trees to my right. I quickly ascertained that they were more woodpeckers, and when they stopped, I was able to tell that they were Downy Woodpeckers. We get another woodpecker in these parts, the Hairy Woodpecker, that looks very much like the Downy, and it's not always easy to determine which you've got, especially when the bird in question is flying from place to place.

Anyhow, I did manage to get some photos of one of the Downies. They're not as showy as the Sapsucker, but they're still pretty cute little birds.

As I'm sure you all know, but I didn't at the time, he's a Long-horned Caddisfly of some sort. That puts him in the family Leptoceridae; he can further be placed in the genus Trianodes, but if you want to know the species, you'd have to have the bug in your hand and be a well-trained entomologist, which I'm not. Not that I don't want to be, though.

The next fellow I met wasn't an expert on bugs, either—he mainly eats berries. He was a Cedar Waxwing, and he and several of his friends had just arrived in the trees on my right.

On the path ahead of me, there were some Song Sparrows. As I approached, one of them flew up to a perch on a tree where I could see him. (Often they scatter into the underbrush on the side of the trail, and I never find them.) Right after I got the camera set for photos, he launched off his perch, and I caught a shot of his takeoff.

I reached the end of the nature dyke without having seen the funny flycatcher or the redstart, and I vowed to look more carefully on my return.

First, though, I was going to check out the observation tower and the cottonwoods that lined the next part of the trail.

When I arrived at the observation tower, I found a pair of Barn Swallows flying around, and soon determined that they were building a nest under the stairs. Here's one of them, carrying nesting materials.

Now, we humans may think we're smart, and we invented construction materials like rebar and reinforced concrete, but swallows were doing that trick long before we were. Heck, they've been doing it since long before the day that Rome was built.

(And those Romans would've called my industrious Barn Swallow a Hirundo rustica.)

After taking a lot of photos of the swallows, I left them to their nesting and headed down the line of cottonwoods. A minute or so later, I encountered a birder who I had chatted with a little when she passed me on the dyke. And to my surprise, she was walking with someone else, and the someone else turns out to be my friend Carlo. He must've been on the dyke ahead of us.

Anyhow, they were headed back down the dyke to try to find the funny-sounding flycatcher. I figured that this would be my best chance to find the bird, and so I abandon my search of the cottonwoods and go back with them. Besides which, Carlo's always good company.

Well, Carlo's got good ears, and he found the bird fairly quickly. As the three of us listened to the bird, I came to realize that I wasn't actually hearing anything, myself. I could pretend to listen, but that bird's call was just completely out of the range of my hearing.

Anyhow, the bird did show himself, so I did get a few photos of him.

The strange song of this bird is important, because there are two species of flycatcher (the Willow Flycatcher and the Alder Flycatcher) that look almost (if not exactly) the same, and the only reliable way to tell them apart in the field is by their song. In these parts, we get a lot of Willow Flycatchers, and reports of Alder Flycatchers cause birders to get up off their couches and take notice. This bird was giving a song that wasn't quite Willow, and wasn't quite Alder. Carlo was really hoping to turn it into an Alder, but I think the final verdict on the bird was "strange Willow". Here's one more look at him.

That was very cool...coming back with Carlo had certainly paid off.

The others headed on as I waited in hopes that the redstart would come back and give me unobstructed camera angles, but soon I hear some (human) calling, and I head down the trail to find Carlo looking at an Eastern Kingbird across the slough to the south.

Eastern Kingbirds are large flycatchers with a black-and-white color scheme.

Carlo facetiously suggested that with my camera I should get good photos that show the red stripe on the back of the kingbird's head. Now, I'd never seen a red stripe on a kingbird's head, but Carlo went on to explain (with some lament) that he had a guide book that showed a red stripe there, and that he'd spent years looking at kingbirds specifically for the red stripe and never seen it.

Carlo and the other birder went on, and I stayed behind shooting the kingbird. I even got a few shots of him when he turned his head. It was only after I got home that I saw that these shots actually show a stripe right down the middle of the head, and that the stripe is vaguely red.

I have another, more blurry photo where the color is more obviously red, but if you're sensitive to color you should be able to tell even from this photo.

I soon was on my way, and made it back to the end of the dyke without finding any further subjects. I decided that I'd ditch my tripod and walk north to the near observation tower. As I started towards my car, though, I got distracted by Sally here, who was meandering across the road in front of the snack bar.

Sally, naturally, is a salamander. A Western Long-toed Salamander, to be precise (or, as my pal Nero would say, Ambystoma macrodactylum). It looked as if she had some damage to her tail and was growing a new one.

As she moved on, I dropped my tripod in my car trunk and headed out to the near tower.

Most of the time when I go out to an observation tower, the convention has been that the people are on the tower, and they look at the birds. Today it just seemed that that convention had been turned around, and the rule was that the birds were on the tower, looking at the people.

This was another swallow, only this was a Cliff Swallow, and he (and several friends) were nesting under the roof of the structure (as opposed to the Barn Swallows, who were nesting under the stairs of the other one). Like Barns, Cliffs build their homes mainly out of mud.

And every good home starts with a good foundation. Here I caught a Cliff applying mud to the wood to form the foundation that will support his nest.

Now, that girl may be appealing to another Cliff Swallow, but I personally wish that she'd go wash the mud off her face.

Oh well, maybe it's some new beauty treatment...

I'll show you one more photo of the Cliffs, this one showing two sitting in a half-built nests. They're quite distinctive birds, with red and the blue and the big white patch on their forehead.

I had been expecting the Cliff Swallow nests, because as I walked towards the tower, I saw a lot of Cliffs flying back and forth from the marsh to the tower. They were collecting mud from the marsh to build their nests.

It was about 1:30 and I was getting tired and hungry, so I made the short walk back to the parking lot. There were a few Barn Swallows hanging around the snack bar and caretaker house, and I got some shots of one on the roof of the house.

I sat and rested a few minutes before driving on. On the way back, at a place where Rennie Road crosses a river, I pulled over when I saw some medium-sized birds in the bushes. A quick glance through my Roman binoculars told me they were Columba fasciata, and so I got out and got more identifiable pigeon photos than I had gotten in the morning.

They were quite wary, though, and I wasn't able to close the gap any further to get better photos..

Veni, vidi, luxigraphi,
Tom