Ash-throated Flycatcher
The distribution region of the Ash-throated Flycatcher doesn’t extend this much north, but this young individual stayed in Boundary Bay for over a month, to the delight of all bird chasers.
Tag: Boundary Bay
Northern Harrier on her toe-tips
Yellow-headed Blackbird (male)
Two male Yellow-headed Blackbirds were in a flock of 15 Brown-headed Cowbirds and 2 Red-winged Blackbirds females. They landed on a bush along the golf course, at the base of 72nd St. Is there an appropriate habitat inside the golf course, or were they just passing by?
The American Pipit is a small brownish bird who “Breeds in arctic and alpine tundra. In migration and winter uses coastal beaches and marshes, stubble fields, recently plowed fields, mudflats, and river courses.”
On a trip to Boundary Bay we had a couple of dozens of them.
As the guided trip came to its end, a Peregrine Falcon hovered over a mixed flock of Black-bellied Plovers and Western Sandpipers, startled them all to flight and left with a Sandpiper in its claws.
You can’t get to the Reifel Bird Sanctuary, Iona Island or Boundary Bay by public transit alone. The reason is, these places are home for birds, and birds don’t take public transit. Why Nature Vancouver, which organizes birding trips, rarely coordinate car pooling, is an open question (but see comment).
The significance of the Birding by Bike trip at Boundary Bay was not by the bird species (my count was 37 species including an Eurasian Collared-Dove for a life bird) I encountered, but by the revelation that I can get places that are at the edge of the known earth (well, almost…) with my trusted pair of bicycle combined with public transit. And I can stay there the whole day! Birds, here I come!