On Wednesday April 20th, Michelle Baudais and Harvey Dueck led a birding field trip at Jericho Park. The weather was fine and lots of birds were singing, especially the white-crowned sparrows. We had 20 participants registered for the trip, with 6 on the waiting list, suggesting there is demand for midweek as well as weekend field trips. If you’re considering leading a trip, please contact Bill Kinkaid or Janet Snell. Many people will appreciate your efforts.

We started off along the beach, where we were treated to waterfowl in magnificent breeding plumage: horned and red-necked grebes, two common loons and a red-throated loon, a Bonaparte’s gull with a lovely black head, as well as a double-crested cormorant, a glaucous-winged gull and a male common goldeneye.

We left the beach to stroll through some bushes near the Jericho Sailing centre, where we found an Anna’s Hummingbird, white-crowned and golden-crowned sparrows, a spotted towhee, song sparrow and several savannah sparrows.

Heading for the ponds, we found an American Goldfinch, several Northern Flicker, tree swallows on a nest box, yellow-rumped warblers, common yellowthroat (the first I’ve seen this year), cedar waxwing, red-winged blackbirds, great blue heron, American wigeon, mallards and a couple of American coot. There were golden-crowned, fox sparrows and ruby-crowned kinglets in the bushes south of the ponds. There was also a brown creeper.

There were crows and robins throughout the trip, along with at least two bald eagles. One juvenile eagle was being harassed by a crow as it flew past.

Here’s a link to Tara’s ebird checklist, and Harvey’s version with slightly different count numbers and one more species reported by Michelle. Counts are very rough, as the focus was on making sure everyone saw the birds, rather than on counting them.

Thanks to everyone who came for making this a thoroughly enjoyable event, and especial thanks to the eagle-eyed observers who were the first to spot various birds.

Here are some photos of birds we saw, courtesy of Vicky Earle (thanks Vicky!)