Trip Report and Photos by Doug Cooper

Seven participants enjoyed the morning of June 15th exploring a kilometre or so of the Trans Canada Trail as it climbs up and east from Penzance Drive in north Burnaby.  The main trail and accompanying side branches go through a healthy mostly undisturbed stretch of mixed secondary growth forest.  We saw and heard a total of 33 species of birds and found a few blooming wildflowers, despite the proximity of the trail to the Parkland refinery with its noisy and CO2-producing flare stack.  One of the participants remarked that it was perhaps the steady quality of the noise emanating from the flare that reduced the potential disturbance to the surrounding bird life.  We won’t go into the effect on the local and planetary air quality.

Highlights were a busy vocal pair of Hutton’s Vireos finding and carrying food back to a hidden nest, a flyby of a few Band-tailed Pigeons, a good variety of flycatchers (Willow, Olive-sided, Western [of the Pacific-slope variety] plus Western Wood-pewee) and singing examples of nearly all the warblers expected in our area (Yellow-rumped, Townsend’s, Black-throated Gray, Orange-crowned and Wilson’s).  Istvan Orosi and his excellent ears picked up the Townsend’s song before it was confirmed by Merlin.  Flowering plants included Three-leaf Foamflower, a single Western Starflower and a bumper crop of Osoberries.