Where: Richmond Nature House, Iona Beach Regional Park (Richmond)
Weather: Mostly sunny, 3-6°C
The Outing
Richmond Nature House
The nice thing about Richmond Nature House is the birds gather nicely together for you, thanks to a bunch of feeders arranged behind a fence just north of the house itself. It’s like a birding buffet.
Despite the cooler temperatures, there was no wind here, so it felt fine. As before, juncos were very well-represented, and towhees were also rather abundant. We did see a nuthatch, but it didn’t stay around long, though a hairy woodpecker gave us plenty of opportunity for photos. Squirrels of various types were back gorging themselves in the feeders and even the rat was back, nibbling at seeds on the ground with its creepy yet cute forepaws, which kind of look like little human hands.
A number of Anna’s hummingbirds were present, too, and I actually got some decent shots of them in flight (albeit with blurred wings, since I was letting the camera do all the heavy lifting).
In all, we got a very nice set of birb photos here.
Iona Beach
I wasn’t expecting to see a lot of birds at Iona, and the wind picked up, so it was a tad cold. The tide was also in, which meant the opportunities for seeing shorebirds was greatly reduced–or so we thought!
There were a bunch of herons ringing the main pond, like silent stabby sentinels. Unfortunately, most were a little too far away, but at least they don’t jump all over the place when you’re shooting them.
Our trek past the pond and through the wooded area yielded no birds, but we did see a pair of bald eagles land on a log boom as we swung by the river. Further up were a trio of cormorants resting on some pilings, along with some gadwalls and wigeons (to be clear, the gadwalls and wigeons were not on the pilings with the cormorants, though that would have made for some very interesting shots).
There was also a crow standing on top of a sign, acting very dramatic. We took pictures, it seemed satisfied, then flew off.
Just before heading out, we saw a very round song sparrow, which are probably the birbiest of birbs around here. We thought we were done, but as we started driving off, we saw the tide was now beginning to go out and lo, there were shorebirds!
We got some shots of dunlins and killdeer tooling around along the shore, as well as a look at probably hundreds of pintails gathered in one of the ponds adjacent to the sewer/water plant. Most were snoozing. Presumably it doesn’t smell that bad in there. Or pintails have a lousy sense of smell.
The biggest surprise, though, was an area of bushes and trees along the pipe leading to the jetty, where a surprisingly large number of ruby-crowned kinglets were flitting about. We both managed to get some decent shots of them, which is normally something of a miracle, especially for me.
I seemed to have better luck with Nic’s camera this time. I’m not sure what I did differently, though maybe having full use of both arms and hands helped. Whatever it was, it was nice to not have a giant boatload of blurry photos to sort through (I had a smaller boatload of blurry photos, but most were pretty decent!)
The Shots
Soon™
The Birds (and other critters). Rare or rarely-seen birds highlighted in bold.
Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:
- Anna’s hummingbird
- Black-capped chickadee
- Dark-eyed junco
- Fox sparrow
- Golden-crowned sparrow
- Hairy woodpecker
- House finch
- Purple finch
- Red-breasted nuthatch
- Ruby-crowned kinglet
- Song sparrow
- Spotted towhee
- Steller’s jay
Waterfowl and shorebirds:
- American wigeon
- Common merganser
- Double-crested cormorant
- Dunlin
- Gadwall
- Great blue heron
- Green-winged teal
- Mallard
- Northern pintail
Common:
- American crow
- Assorted gulls
- Rock pigeon
Raptors:
- Bald eagle
- Northern harrier
Non-birds:
- Gray squirrel
- Black squirrel
- Douglas squirrel
- A rat. An American rat? I am not an expert on rat types.
