Bird ID

[Graphite]

Photos?

[grammafreddy]

Anyone know what this is?

[oneh2obabe]

Just a wild guess ... a bird standing in water?

[ferri]

maybe this? http://www.birdweb.org/birdweb/bird/spotted_sandpiper

[dickcannings]

This is a Spotted Sandpiper.

[grammafreddy]

Thanks ferri and Dick - its a new lifer for me!

[Queen K]

It's a great bird shot, and you know how hard birds are to catch with a bright eye like that.

[grammafreddy]

Thanks, Queenie. Walt and I birded along the river by the slag piles yesterday.

Here's another one I got .... a fledgling (?) Say's Phoebe perhaps?

[ferri]

yes, it sure looks like a Say's Phoebe. they are cute little things.


http://nobbync.smugmug.com/keyword/says ... 52&k=6dWU2

[dickcannings]

Yes, definitely a Say's Phoebe, and the pale gape would suggest a young-of-the-year. Nice picture!

[Glacier]

We were staying at a ranch in the Cariboo this week. Sleeping in the tent we could hear this really funny sounding bird yattering away. The ranch owners are avid birders, so we asked them in the morning what the bird was. They told us it was most definitely one of these. I looked it up in one of their many birding books, and showed it to the Mrs. and asked her if she had seen this page yet.

"Ya, I saw-whet," was the reply.

Also up in the Cariboo, my mom has bluebirds every year. I saw them up there again this year, but for some reason I've never seen them in the Okanagan. Guess I'm just not looking in the right spots?

[grammafreddy]

Very cool about the saw-whets. My owl list is very short - one species, the Pygmy Owl.

Bluebirds ... the Tower Ranch has both Western and Mountain Bluebirds. It also has Lazuli Buntings which are a *blue* bird - LOL (except they are in the "finch" family).

[Queen K]

We had two Cedar Waxwings in our trees today. No camera OF COURSE. I think they were scouting for food for the flock.

[grammafreddy]

I've have about two dozen Cedar Waxwings in my yard every morning when I put the oscillating sprinkler on - they have their morning shower here!

[Glacier]

Interesting...

The Williams Lake Field Naturalists held their 45th annual Christmas bird count on December 16th under very favourable weather conditions. Williams Lake had frozen a little more overnight leaving about 30% open water but unfortunately for counters, most of the water birds had seen the writing on the wall, and left while they still could.

3,646 birds of 56 species were counted on the day by 31 observers in the field and as well as 16 feeder watchers. Individual bird numbers were a little below normal while the number of species was 4 above the 10 year average. The hoped-for Snowy Owl, which was seen a couple of days before at Scout Island and on South Lakeside, was not found on count day -- but there were compensations. The bird of the day, which eclipsed all others, was not identified until three days after the count.



Feeder watcher, Marion Corless, had phoned in her report from Terra Ridge with a note that she had seen an unusual bird that she could not identify. Two days later Marion, who is 91 and has been watching birds since she was 11, saw the bird again and after poring through her bird field guides, was able to identify the bird as a Tanager.

The Western Tanager occurs in the Cariboo as a breeding bird and winters in Central and South America. Marion was not satisfied that the bird was this species but the only other two Tanagers breed across Eastern North America, winter south of the Equator and are accidental in BC.

She informed count coordinator Phil Ranson and by the time he arrived, she had come to the conclusion the bird must be a Scarlet Tanager; a bird that has never occurred in the interior of the province and has only been recorded 6 or 7 times previously on the coast. Photographs were taken and sent to experts who confirmed the identity as a Scarlet Tanager.