Young Birders inspire all over North America and the local Bald Eagles are back!

1. I am really proud of the young birders I work with in BC. However, I am also really proud of many I have met across North America.

When Ilya and I went down to California in January 2016 we got to meet a young birder named Ryan Andrews who I had been corresponding with via Flickr. He helped us tremendously with finding birds and I really wanted to meet him. So his mom and him came out and met us in San Diego we birded around Balboa Park and was looking for a reported Summer and Hepatic Tanager. The Hepatic Tanager would be a lifer for Ilya. I had already seen them in Arizona. Anyways we had searched the grounds as we got there early before Ryan and his mom arrived.

We found Allen's Hummingbirds, California Scrub-Jays, Black Phoebes and the like but no Tanagers of any sort! Well we meet Ryan and we all decide to split up and look for this Tanager. About 5 mins later Ryan is calling loudly "I've got the Tanager!". We run to him and he has a beautiful male Hepatic Tanager feeding on the trees above us. How could we have missed this beautiful red brilliant bird... I'm sure we looked there before ..didn't we? haha. Right after that a flock of Red-masked Parakeets (non -countable) flew by. He later helped us to find our lifer Common Gallinule... He was one cool kid.

Well Elisa Yang is Ryan's friend and he told us about birding with her. He is a member of her California Young Birder's Club. I never met Elisa but talked to on Flickr and she was recently interviewed by the ABA magazine and now by Bird Note. This interview completed for the Bird Note Blog is pretty fantastic. You get to hear Elisa speak on tape and she talks about all the things that my young birders find special in being part of a program of like-minded youth birders.

This young woman created her own young birder club! Pretty cool! You can see her professional website and read all about her California Young Birder Club HERE. It is pretty crazy that a state as big and populated as California didn't have a Young Birder Club but neither did our province of BC until 2014!

Have a listen to Elisa Yang's fascinating interview by Bird Note HERE.

Young Birders across North America continue to inspire us all.

2. It is that time of year again the Bald Eagles are back! I wrote an extensive post about where to watch eagles including at the upcoming Fraser Valley Bald Eagle Festival (Nov 18-19)  but the Brackendale (Squamish) ones are back now too. They are mostly at Squamish Estuary now but will later move into Brackendale in December. I can't wait to spend a lot of time photographing these guys this winter. For all the details on where to watch eagles in the lower mainland this winter and about the boat tours you can take to photograph them, click HERE.

Here is a beautiful video my friend Chris Dale made today of the Bald Eagles eating Salmon in Squamish.


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