I'm generally a spontaneous guy, doing whatever strikes me as interesting when I get up in the morning (or afternoon...). But on Thursday the 17th, I had a plan already arranged. I had roped my friends Ilya and Carlo into a birding trip up to the Nicola Valley.

The trip involved getting up early, picking up my friends, stopping at Tim Horton's, and driving for a few hours to get to Merritt, which is at the south end of the road we were going to drive. These events all passed unremarkably, with the possible exception of mistaking my left for my right on the way to Carlo's.

Once we left Merritt, though, we started to encounter birds. The first ones we found were some Common Loons in a lake to the west of the road. They were swimming quite near the road, and by pulling over and sticking my camera out the window, I got some pretty good shots. We were close enough to see (and photograph) the distinctive and sometimes subtle colors on the head, eye, and neck. This was a great start to our birding.

After a few minutes at the pond, we packed up and headed along. Waterfowl are nice, but we get plenty of them back around Vancouver.

The next place we stopped was at a place called Beaver Ranch Flats, which is a wildlife conservation area. The flats contains a long pond and marsh and some desert surrounding it. Being as the main feature was another pond, we saw a lot more waterfowl. But soon my sharp-eyed companions located something else: a Black Tern. It was on the far side of the pond; I shot several photos despite the distance and ended up with one or two where you can at least tell it's a Black Tern. This guy was a lifer for me.

We spotted a few other Black Terns, and looked at some cages that had been set up in the water, trying to figure out what they were for (probably some sort of census or experiment). Next we noticed a pair of Peregrine Falcons zooming by near the hills opposite us. The Peregrines were too fast and too far for me to get photos; they also stayed low against the hills, which would fool my autofocus if I tried to use it.

One of the falcons did eventually settle into a tree behind us, and we all spent some time looking at him in our scopes. A travelling couple pulled into the parking lot and we chatted birds with them a little, showing them the falcon.

As we were chatting, I noticed a few dragonflies buzzing around the parking lot, and I took a few shots of one of them. This guy is a Cherry-faced Meadowhawk.

We got back in the car and started back out along the little two-lane highway. We hadn't gotten very far when Ilya (sitting beside me in the bird-spotting seat) spotted Lewis's Woodpeckers in some trees on our right. I pulled over onto a dirt road headed that way and sprung out of the car with my camera.

My friends had a few looks through their binoculars at the birds, but I quickly realized that I wasn't in a good position to get photos, and went traipsing off into the brush to get to a better place. Lewis's are very pretty birds, with unusual colors for a woodpecker. I'd seen a few of them before, but had only gotten barely-identifiable photos. I didn't want to miss this opportunity to catch them in good sunlight.

I set my sights on the closest bird, and tried to get position on him. It took a little while, and involved crossing a gully, climbing a hillock, and losing line-of-sight with my friends, but eventually I did it. I didn't get the greatest photos of him, but I didn't want to leave my friends for too long.

Here's a shot I got of my bird peering around a thin trunk at me. You can see the red on his face, the pink on his belly, and the grey on his neck. Sadly, though, his green wings are too dark to make out the color.

I could've stayed for an hour or two to see if I could get good photos, but this was a joint expedition, and my friends were birders and would be more into moving along and finding other birds. I ended up happy with my photos, anyway...they're much better than the ones I had gotten before.

When I got back to where I started, I found that Carlo and Ilya hadn't siezed the obvious opportunity to take off with my car. It must have been quite tempting...I had left it running when I went after the bird (I wasn't expecting to be out of the car long). They had even turned the car off. Honest and nice guys, these two...maybe they can sympathize with eccentric people charging off into the brush in pursuit of birds.

Again we headed up the highway. Our next few stops were by a lake on our right, where we saw a pair of adult Red-necked Grebes tending to a juvenile. Here's the juvie and one of the adults.

Soon we reached Kamloops, the town at the north end of the valley. This was a good thing, as it was now about 1:45 in the afternoon, and we were all getting a bit peckish. We went to a restaurant in town and contemplated our next moves.

We decided to head out to Tranquille, a wildlife preserve on the north side of the town. I had been there the year before and found a few species, and hoped that my more-experienced friends would be able to find more interesting stuff.

Before we got all the way to Tranquille, though, I spotted a bird on a wire, and my bird turned out to be a Mourning Dove. I took a few photos before driving on.

We also saw a small Empidonax flycatcher, but were fighting the sun and weren't able to make a positive identification of him.

Next we drove up a mountain to Lac du Bois park; this was another place that I had gone to the year before. Once in the park, I pulled over and we went for the only real walk of our trip.

On our walk, we encountered several Vesper Sparrows, like this fellow here.

The area we were in, elevated as it was, was prime territory for seeing nuthatches. When I had been there the year before, I had found all three North American nuthatches—Pygmy, Red-breasted, and White-breasted—in a single tree. Ilya was keen to seen a White-breasted, so we kept on the lookout for them.

Well, we walked up the hill for a ways, and saw a lot of Red-breasted Nuthatches, but no White-breasted or Pygmy. We had gathered to decide what to do when Ilya spotted an American Kestrel and a Sharp-shinned Hawk flying by in the distance. I see lots of Kestrels in my travels, but few Sharp-shinneds, so I took some photos of the latter. He was pretty far away, though.

Maybe Carlo's right...unlike my bird, White-breasted Nuthatches have reddish plumage around the vent and don't have a black stripe through the eye...hmmmm.

We discovered that it was 4:30 already and decided that we'd better start heading back. We walked along a dirt road, and I stopped to take some photos of one of the many grasshoppers that were in the area. There were at least two species of grasshoppers about; one was the familiar Carolina Grasshopper, which has yellow wings with a black band on them. The other was a grasshopper with bright orange wings. I think this fellow was one of the latter.

Back in the car, we drove back through Kamloops and got on the Coquihalla Expressway. Our plan was to go drive back to Merritt and then find Kane Valley Road, a small road that Carlo said has a reputation as being a good birding road.

We accomplished this with no problem, and found ourselves heading out Kane Valley, a gravel road, at a little after 7:00. We didn't have much time, as the road winds through some mountains, mountains tend to block light, and the sun was getting low. It would soon be too dark for us to see much.

But while we still had light, we got some good birds. A little ways along the road, we stopped when my friends saw a Mountain Bluebird in a tree to our left.

There were several other birds in the area, including more Vesper Sparrows, and this flycatcher.

The flycatcher is an Empidonax, but none of us were able to tell its exact identity in the field. Maybe Carlo or Ilya will be able to tell from the photo.

We drove a little farther along the road, and came across a lot of cattle. Some of it was on the road, and some of it was off. My favorite of the mooers was this little one, who is affectionately known as 6-186.

I pulled over a little later for some sparrows on the fence, and they turned out to be more Vesper Sparrows.

One of the most interesting encounters happened next. As we drove along, we startled a big ol' beaver who was on the side of the road. He turned and went down a little incline into some water as I pulled to a stop beside him and took aim with my camera. I was shooting through vegetation, and it was pretty dark, but I did get some detail on the critter. This photo shows a lot of his face, seemingly in much more light than was actually out there...that's one of the neat things about photography.

That was neat; I'd never photographed beavers before, and certainly had never seen any on the side of a road.

I had seen deer at the side of a road before, however. So I wasn't too surprised when we came across one of those. By the time I had my camera in position, though, this one had turned and given us a lovely view of his tail.

Kane Valley Road had turned out to be quite pretty, with ponds and lakes and fields all along it, and a good turnout of wildlife. It would be great to travel it when there was more light and more time to enjoy it; I'll definitely revisit it when I get the chance.

We got one last bird, a Ring-necked Duck, before the light faded too much.

We still had a few hours drive before getting home, and so we didn't get in until quite late (after 11:00). Despite not seeing a lot of things that we couldn't see in the Vancouver area, it had been an interesting trip, for me at least. And Carlo and Ilya still talk with me, so I guess it wasn't all that bad for them, either.

Boldly bringing you birds, bugs, and beavers,
Tom