Wednesday 21 October 2009

Newty beauty

After a bit of essential bureaucracy today, Jenny and I had a wander around wonderful Buttertubs Marsh, Nanaimo, late afternoon.
The first thing we came across was the little fella in the accompanying pic - turns out it's taricha granulosa, or roughskinned newt. Cute huh?


Avian excitement was soon provided by a yellow-rumped warbler flitting around the trackside vegetation while a scan over the nearby water revealed reasonable numbers of American wigeon - though far fewer than on my last visit.
Amongst the wigeon were numerous mallard, 20+ gadwall, a handful of wood duck, small numbers of green-winged teal, a few Canada geese, 20+ American coot and a pair of ring-necked duck. 2 pied-billed grebe were seen.
A Wilson's snipe made a fly-by but carried on over the marsh.
A couple of great-blue herons were fishing the shallows and a northern harrier - appeared to be an adult female rather than a juv? (also pictured - badly!) - was sat on a branch over one of the pools.

Numbers of highly mobile red-winged blackbird were apparent and other common stuff included flickers, house finch, bushtit, golden-crowned kinglet, chestnut-backed chickadee, belted kingfisher etc.
An otter was freaking out small groups of wigeon as it went about its business.

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