Trip leaders Harvey Dueck and Michelle Baudais had originally planned to lead a trip to Pitt Lake in early February, but one of the attractions was the opportunity to see Trumpeter Swans. That’s not very practical if most of the lake and marsh is frozen. So we delayed and were happy to find open water and clear skies when we arrived at the Grant Narrows parking lot on the morning of Saturday March 1st.

The trip began with scope views of distant Trumpeter Swans, so success! But we hoped for more birds and better views, so we headed out along the shore of Pitt Lake on the dike trail.

The surrounding mountains were glorious in the sunshine, but unfortunately the birds were not very cooperative. Often there are raptors perched in the trees and rafts of ducks in the sheltered waters of the extensive marsh to your right, but this morning the waters were almost as clear as the skies.

We did manage to scope a distant group of Ring-necked Ducks, and then found a very interesting leucistic Canada Goose on the foreshore.

Leucism a natural variation that sometimes manifests as white or whitish patches on an otherwise normally-coloured bird, and sometimes shows up as an overall ‘bleaching’ of colour as we saw in this Canada Goose. The melanin in feathers generally makes them stronger, so leucistic birds like this one may not be seen as attractive mates. However this particular goose had a close companion, so maybe it’ll be luckier than most.

After spotting the goose we turned around, hoping to find more birds along the dike trail in the other direction. We did see a large group of mostly Tree Swallows overhead, which made it feel as if Spring had really arrived. But overall birds remained scarce, so we called the trip short a bit early.

Thanks to Holly for keeping the ebird list, and to Larry Cowan for joining us and sharing his expertise: https://ebird.org/checklist/S216155068