Leader Tom Plath scheduled a birding field trip to Boundary Bay for the morning of January 16th. Only two participants, Michelle and Harvey, braved the heavy early morning rain to get there, but the rain stopped pretty much at the scheduled start time.

The very high tide brought the water right up to the dike at the planned starting point at 104th St, so all the birds had gone elsewhere. Tom suggested a change of venue to Blackie Spit, so we drove there.

Blackie Spit had a good mix of birds: common loons and horned grebes offshore, American wigeon with a couple of Eurasian wigeon mixed in, green-winged teal, greater yellowlegs, dunlin and others. A definite highlight was seeing two marbled godwit fly in and land at the end of the spit.

After enjoying the birds at Blackie Spit for about an hour, we drove to Crescent Park to look for forest birds. The park was pretty quiet, perhaps because of the earlier heavy rain and the light drizzle that started as we arrived. We heard some chickadees and golden-crowned kinglets in the trees and saw a few American robins and an Anna’s hummingbird. There were also a few mallards on the pond. We had a very pleasant walk in the woods and it was great to talk with Tom about birding in various parts of the world.

Thank you Tom for a very pleasant morning!