Exploring Kootenay Lake

The Red Crossbill is a colourful nomad. Its bill’s strangely crossed mandibles is an adaptation to enable it to pry seeds from cones. However, Red Crossbills seem to assemble in different groups, each apparently associated with, and probably adapted to, a particular conifer species. This specialization leads flocks of Red Crossbills to travel widely in search of their ideal food. They appear for a few days, but soon travel afar.

That crossbills pry seeds from conifer cones is clear, but I have never seen them do it. Rather, I have always seen them alongside and on roads satisfying their passion for salt.

An interesting characteristic of this bird is its range of hues: from red to orange to yellow and beige. 

The species is named for the brick red colour sported by some of the males. Although this bird is looking right at us, the crossed mandibles are evident.

By way of contrast, this female is beige.

While the species is named for the brick red of some of the males, there are many males that are distinctly orange.

And then there are the first-year males that are a striking yellow.

While the previous Red Crossbills were seen in trees alongside roads, they were merely using them as staging posts to enable them to feast on road salt. This is a female crossbill. Salt is ejected from ice as it freezes and so forms a thin saline solution on the ice surface. Consequently, the crossbill merely has to lick the surface to get the salt.

Crossbills were not the only finches seen foraging on road salt. Here are three pine siskins and two goldfinches. 

If I see a dipper, I stop to watch it.

Yesterday, I was watching a dipper dive from the border ice along the frigid waters of a creek where it hunted along the creek bed for things to eat. Standing beside me was a lad who chatted about the amazing feats of this small bird and opined that it would walk along the creek bed as it searched for things to eat. 

The problem is that knowing just what this bird is doing underwater lay unresolved for a long time. Underwater dives happen rather quickly, and at uncertain locations. Further, surface waves and light reflections typically obscure any view from above.

So, does the dipper walk along the bottom as it forages, or does it use its wings to fly underwater? Curiously, this was a topic of some debate for decades during the twentieth century. Because the dipper can float, it seemed unlikely that it could walk along the bottom, but using its wings to fly underwater, as if in the air, seemed somewhat implausible. 

Careful observation finally settled the issue: It flies under water (although it occasionally will use its feet against the bottom to propel itself forward). 

However, knowing that a dipper uses its wings to fly underwater, and being able to watch it do so, are two different things. Only once before, a half-dozen years ago, did I managed a good shot of a dipper flying underwater. Today I managed rather so-so shot.

A dipper sits on border ice and peers into the waters of the creek before diving in.

When it dives, it has its wings tucked in so as to cut cleanly into the water.

A moment later, it has spread its wings and begins to fly underwater. Its head is tipped down as it scours the bottom for comestibles.

Pygmy Owls are altitudinal migrants: high country in the warm months; valley bottoms in the cold months. Although seen, the Pygmy Owl has not been as common this winter as some other years. It may be that this year’s sparsity of irruptive birds, upon which this owl feeds, has prompted it to not bother with visiting the valleys.

A Pygmy Owl hunts from a power line.