Trip Report by Harvey Dueck

Nature Vancouver’s annual quest to find American Dippers took place on Sunday December 5th.

Larry Cowan led the quest from 2006 to 2019 and never failed to find at least one dipper. Michelle Baudais and Harvey Dueck led the trip this year; we were very relieved to find two dippers looking for food in the fast flowing water. They came within about 5m of our group, so we got quite a good view.

American Dippers are amazing little birds. They’re the only songbird that regularly swims for its food, mainly aquatic invertebrates. This time of year, the ones in the Alouette River are looking for salmon eggs from the November run. With the heavy rains this year, many gravel beds where salmon lay their eggs have been scoured by the floodwaters and the eggs buried or scattered downstream. Hopefully the beds in the Alouette have not been too badly affected. On our scouting trip in late November, Michelle and I saw a dipper with an egg in its beak, which we took as a good sign. More recent flooding has raised the water level in the river and eroded some spots and the dippers we saw were in a different area which had probably been dry when the salmon were spawning. Happily, those dippers seemed to be finding food. It may be awhile before we know how the salmon spawning success was/will be affected.

After observing the dippers for awhile, our group moved to Jerry Sulina Park (also on the Alouette River). We saw quite a few birds in the pond and either side of the dike.

We ended the outing with a drive through the Connecting Road area, where we were lucky to spot an American Kestrel, two Sandhill Cranes, a red-tailed hawk and two Northern Harrier, along with a few other birds.

Here are a few photos from the trip, courtesy of Adam Wang. I’ve appended the full species list after the photos.

Species Observed

American Dipper
American Kestrel
Common Raven
American Crow
Short-billed Gull (new name for Mew Gull)
Glaucous-winged Gull
Varied Thrush
Song Sparrow
Golden-crowned Sparrow
White-crowned Sparrow
Fox Sparrow
Dark-eyed Junco
American Wigeon
Mallard
Ring-necked Duck
American Coot
Common Merganser
Hooded Merganser
Pied-billed Grebe
Common Goldeneye
Bald Eagle
Red-tailed Hawk
Cooper’s Hawk
Northern Harrier
Starling
Eurasian Collared Dove
Black-capped Chickadee
Pacific Wren (heard only)
Great Blue Heron
Sandhill Crane
Canada Goose (might have been cackling, but they only called once and we weren’t certain)
Pine Siskin