Exploring Kootenay Lake

I don’t suppose that any local birder would doubt that Wood Ducks breed around the Lake. Yet, they are remarkably secretive about doing so. Frequently seen are the chicks of Mallards, Common Mergansers and Canada Geese, but not Wood Ducks.

At least, this is the first time I chanced on Wood Duck chicks. Curiously, despite the large number of campers at Kokanee Creek Park, this skittish species was secreted not far from a busy campground.

There were at least four chicks, but only the mother and two of them appear in this grab shot taken though foliage just before they all vanished, presumably as a rebuff to my presence—although, I really wasn’t all that close. 

 
Male Red-naped Sapsucker, 2010

For a week I have been visited by sapsuckers. 

Early one morning a week ago, I first heard and then spotted two sapsuckers on a utility pole, but managed a picture of only one of them before they both flew off. That bird, posted to recent birds and reproduced below, is a male now identified as a Red-naped Sapsucker.  

Since that time, I have heard a sapsucker a half-dozen times but only managed a few more pictures, always of a female Red-naped (one of which is below).

The odd thing about this is that sapsuckers drill holes in trees and then sip the sap that flows. Certainly, that is how I have seen them before, as in the shot of a male working his way around a mountain ash (on the right). This time the sapsuckers seemed to confine themselves to the utility pole, something that clearly lacks sap. They were probably drumming on it to communicate, rather than feed.

This is the first sapsucker (male) seen a week ago.
Its partner went unrecorded at the time.

This is one of a few pictures of the female captured over the subsequent week as it hammered on the pole. Although it was primarily in the shade, there was a moment when shifting leaves allowed sunlight on its red crown.

The Grey-crowned Rosy Finch is not a bird that is often seen, at least not by valley dwellers. It breeds high in the mountains, usually in the vicinity of permanent snowfields.

So it was that on hike up to the Kokanee Glacier last Saturday, Doug Thorburn photographed one and noted:

I didn’t get to spot a nest, but I could hear them
feeding young somewhere nearby.

Doug Thorburn’s pictures are used with permission.

This catch up of recent birds is presented in the order they were taken. 

A Cedar Waxwing at Kokanee Creek Park

A Tree Swallow brings an insect to its chick in a nest cavity.
 

A Spotted Sandpiper chick is out foraging on its own along a beach.

A Red-tailed Hawk soars over Fish Lake. 

An Osprey nest with two chicks

One of the Osprey chicks is being fed by its mother.

At first thought to be a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, this bird is now determined to be a Red-naped Sapsucker. It tried its luck on a utility pole but soon gave up finding sap there.