Happy Spring! Below is my bird list for March. It contains fewer additions than I’d hoped for, but there are a couple of new birds and I was finally able to get a decent look at the hawks too. Early in the month, my wife spotted a House Sparrow at our feeder but that was, unfortunately, the only time we saw it. Likewise, I only managed one good look at a Brown Creeper while walking the dog through the trails at Dogwood Park a few days later.
Two weeks ago, we went for a walk along Centennial Beach at Boundary Bay Regional Park and a Bald Eagle buzzed our heads and landed close by. It was a huge, chocolate coloured juvenile, but when it flew away we could see that it was bright white under its wings. This creature’s enormous size made me question the sanity of the couple who came walking along behind us with their snack-size Shih Tzu off-leash.1
Spring is coming on quick in our neck of the woods. The garden is surging back to life and we’ve even had a few bees about. The neighbourhood crows are busy building nests, as were the pair of Bewick’s Wrens that spent last Saturday morning scouring our garden for building supplies. I could make no sense of their selection/rejection process but it seemed like pretty serious business. One day, I even heard a hummingbird zip by, a sound that always reminds me of the rapid whir of my fly reel when an angry trout suddenly takes off with my line. An obvious sign that it’s time to go fishing!
American Robin
American Wigeon
Bald Eagle
Bewick’s Wren*
Black-capped Chickadee
Brown Creeper*
Bushtit
Canada Goose
Cooper’s Hawk*
Dark-eyed Junco
European Starling
Glaucous-winged Gull
Great Blue Heron
House Finch
House Sparrow*
Mallard
Northwestern Crow
Red-tailed Hawk*
Song Sparrow
Spotted Towhee
Steller’s Jay
Varied Thrush
Winter Wren
- Update: Apparently a 5 to 7.5 kg. Bald Eagle can lift only about half its weight. So a 4 to 7.5 kg. Shih Tzu may be in less danger than I thought. Still after watching this video of a Golden Eagle hunting goats, I think I’d still proceed with caution. ↩
I just noticed that your bird image in your heading has binocular vision. A most unusual bird!
He has a genetic disorder known as Daffy Duck Disease.