Exploring Kootenay Lake

The American Dipper is covered in guidebooks with statements such as:

Perches on rocks within fast-flowing mountain streams and dives underwater for aquatic insect larvae.

It seems that one local dipper failed to read these manuals; its behaviour departed somewhat from the description.

Yesterday’s dipper:

• Didn’t hunt along a stream, but in a lake (behaviour seen before in midwinter);
• Sang from on a rock perch, but then flew to deeper water, alighted on the surface, floated, peered below and dove;
• Surfaced with (what seems to be) a fish and flew off.

This dipper acted rather as if it were a kingfisher wannabe. (Whimsey aside, I recognize that limited guidebook space allows for few subtleties).

A dipper sings from a rock along the shore of Kootenay Lake.

It then flew to deeper water, floated a bit while peering below, then dove.

After surfacing, it flew off carrying, what certainly looks like, a small fish.

I watched a Bohemian Waxing landing in a bush beside my pathway. It then took off, but more arrived and filled a mountain ash. Waxwings travel in flocks and usually provide for good pictures as they feast on berries. So, I happily clicked away, paying more attention to exposure, focus, and composition than I did to the birds themselves.

It was only after looking at the pictures that I realized that only some of the birds in the flock were Bohemian Waxwings; most were Pine Grosbeaks. (Well, actually, I thought they were Red Crossbills, but Gary Davidson set me straight on that). The Pine Grosbeak is listed as uncommon in my neighbourhood, and occasional elsewhere in the West Kootenay. Maybe I can be forgiven for not recognizing it.

A Pine Grosbeak samples a berry from a mountain ash to give a picture of red on red.
Many of the berries show signs of having been chewed.

The same bird, but facing the other way and eating a berry.

A view from the back shows the white bars on the wings.

This one is a female.

And what about the Bohemian Waxwings that started it all? Well, here is one that was travelling with the grosbeaks.

This is a problem that only a birder could love: how to distinguish the female Barrow’s Goldeneye from the female Common Goldeneye. Both are ducks, and both look much the same.

I was reminded of this problem during a lakeside walk this morning. There in the water was a pair of Common Goldeneyes—a fact made obvious by the male. During the breeding season (which is upon us), he is the showy one. He is black and white. The male Common Goldeneye has a circular cheek patch; the male Barrow’s Goldeneye has a crescent cheek patch.

The females, however, try to be inconspicuous, and in doing so are an almost identical brown and grey. Almost—but not quite. Distinguishing them is mainly a problem when they are seen alone. In the pictures, below, the females appear with the males making their identification obvious. This pairing enables one to recognize the subtle differences between the females.

A Common Goldeneye couple (male has an oval cheek patch) along the West Arm this morning. The female goldeneye has a somewhat more sloping forehead than the Barrow’s and its bill has extensive black at its base.

Here are some Barrow’s Goldeneyes (male has a crescent cheek patch) seen at the Nelson waterfront last month. The females have a steeper forehead and a bill with somewhat more yellow.

The Christmas Bird Count (CBC) is over a century old. It was started by birders in reaction to the nineteenth century practice of hunters seeing how many birds could be shot in a day.

Yesterday I, too, went out to shoot birds—but, with my camera. I was a minor participant in Nelson’s count, which in turn was a minor participant in North America’s count. The pictures I show below are only a few of the things I saw. My favourite bird of the day was the Hooded Merganser.

There are always many crows and ravens to count. Here is a preening crow in a tree.

Mallards were numerous. These ones were on the ice of a small bay.

There were House Finches near someone’s feeder. Here is the female.

The male was caught in flight. It has lowered its legs as it approaches a landing. The House Finch has a undulating flight: it flaps its wings briskly, then folds them and coasts for a moment before flapping again. This bird was caught at the moment its wings were folded. Note the seed from the feeder in its bill.

The Bufflehead Duck has iridescent feathers on its head. Normally they look black, but sometimes in the sunlight, colours can be seen. I have tried to photograph this before, but with somewhat less success.

Although not as small as the Bufflehead, the Hooded Merganser is much smaller than the Mallard, as is clear when one swims past the other.

My favourite picture of the day is of the Hooded Merganser, but I like it almost as much for the look of the water as for the bird itself.

Most herons I see around the West Kootenay are grey (despite the bird’s name of Great Blue Heron); a few are bluish grey. But, now and then there is a heron that looks really blue.

I was reminded of this colour difference when visiting the Coast where I saw a heron that was strikingly blue. So, why the difference?

The main species of Great Blue Heron is designated Ardea herudias herodias. There is a subspecies found at the Coast called Ardea herodias fannini. Was the markedly blue heron seen at the Coast a fannini?

The plot thickens when one visits ebird.org and discovers that the site plots the range of both the Great Blue Heron and something they label as the Great Blue Heron (Blue form). Do these categories correspond to herodias and fannini?

That issue aside, ebird shows the (normal, and presumably grey) Great Blue Heron extending across the US and southern Canada. In BC, the Blue form is found at the Coast and occasionally in the Okanagan with one observation at Creston.

I show some examples below, but my primary question is: How often is the Blue form seen in the West Kootenay?

Here is a standard heron around here. It is distinctly greyish.

Here is the heron seen at the Coast. It is distinctly bluish.

This heron was seen a few years ago on the West Arm of Kootenay Lake. It is distinctly bluish. Was it a visitor from the Coast?

The last three postings were products of a seasonal trip from Kootenay Lake to the Coast.  Delights such as the Snowy Owls and the Snow Geese merited a posting of their own. But, what else was seen? Herein lies the journey’s residua.

For me, the most unexpected sighting was that of Mute Swans. A native of Europe, this species was imported to a Victoria park about 1889. It has now established feral populations on Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland. Indeed, recently some have been spotted as far east as the Okanagan, so they may ultimately reach Kootenay Lake to add to the two native species: Tundra and Trumpeter Swans.

Not far from the Mute Swans, there were some Trumpeter Swans foraging in a field. This was interesting because, around Kootenay Lake, I have only seen them dabbling in the Lake.

Cormorants are common on the Coast, but around Kootenay Lake they are usually only seen at the south end of the Main Lake.

The Great Blue Heron is common both at the Coast and at Kootenay Lake. This one in Ladner is looking particularly blue.

Another picture that could have been taken here, but was taken at the Coast, is this one of wigeons flying.

Red-tailed Hawks are seen across BC, but the Western subspecies, shown here with its characteristic brown head, is confined to the southwest corner.

Here are two eagles foraging in a field. They could have been seen anywhere across the Province. This is the adult.

The second eagle is a juvenile. It looks like what is called a Basic I which is a one-and-a-half year old. So this bird would have been hatched in 2010.

Finally there is the Clark’s Nutcracker, a bird that can be seen anywhere in southern BC, but this one was photographed in Keremeos.

What’s a lad from the West Kootenay mountains (and used to seeing at most twenty birds at a time) to do when faced with the Coastal chaos of thousands and thousands of Snow Geese? Why, take pictures.

According to the nearby Reifel Bird Sanctuary, these are the Lesser Snow Geese and they are part of a population that nests at Wrangle Island (a Russian island in the Arctic Ocean, north of Siberia).

The three pictures below were taken in Ladner, BC.

The Snowy Owl is a rare visitor to southern BC. But, now and then—maybe every four or five years—there is a shortage of lemmings to eat in the arctic and the owls fly farther south in search of food.

I took these pictures on a Boxing Day visit to Ladner. Now, birders around Kootenay Lake are hoping for a visit.

This is one striking bird.

It is often seen in pairs.

A friend flies in for a visit.

The owl has a flexible neck.