DARE TO BIRD

Young Birders at One Mile Lake in Pemberton - Photo: Melissa Hafting We had a great day in Pemberton this past weekend.  We drove up on a gorgeous sunny day and made our first stop at beautiful One Mile Lake. We admired the strange lily pads growing here. We also watched an Osprey and Turkey Vulture fly overhead and then a Merlin went rip-roaring by!. The Merlin was in hot pursuit of a dragonfly. The Merlin won... it perched above us as it ate the head off of one dragonfly after another. It was nice to see this little falcon so close.  Merlin in Pemberton - Photo: Sasha Fairbairn We also got some nice views of Warbling and Red-eyed Vireo here but other than that pretty quiet. We admired the glacial blue look of the creek here. Bridget walking along the boardwalk at One Mile Lake - Photo: Melissa Hafting    Admiring the glacial creek in Pemberton - Photo: Melissa Hafting Next we were off to Mount Currie to look for Alder Flycatcher. The last reports came from

Young Birder Adam Dhalla has partnered with the National Wildlife Federation to create a virtual video game called "Find the Birds of the US and Canada," to get kids interested into birding. It also will help the kids identify the birds in the real world by having fun with innovative, interactive game play. He sure is a brilliant young man who wants to inspire change and bird conservation.! He developed the concept for the game. Petricore an indie game company will create and build the game. This game will be a free download for youth on iOs and Android devices . You can watch a video interview he did below: You can donate to his gofundme campaign to help his dream of the game becoming reality HERE 

I was recently asked to do an interview about urban birding in Vancouver by fellow blogger Bryony Angell. She writes for The National Audubon Society as well. We discussed the young birders program, the challenges of being a female birder and more. You can read the interview HERE   Thanks again to Bryony for such a great interview! By the way on another note I went out last night and got a photo of the Common Ringed Plover I found: Common Ringed Plover in Delta - Photo: Melissa Hafting

Well today started off kind of slow. I wanted to go birding at Beach Grove/Boundary Bay Regional Park .I was telling Ilya all evening that I felt we could find a rarity there tonight. I don't know why I said this. I don't usually say stuff like that but hand a good feeling. Ilya felt we had better odds at Boundary Bay so we started off at 96th St and saw thousands of peeps but none would land and there were no plover flocks; so we finally decided to head over to Beach Grove. When we got there the tide was so high but we found a decent flock of peeps at the spit and watched them at close range. We picked out some semipalmated sandpipers and just enjoyed the view. Soon Mike and Sharon Toochin joined us and then Richard Swanston. We were all just chatting and enjoying the beautiful evening when this plover flew in right in front of us. The bird was facing away from us and Sharon joked "check to see it isn't a Common Ringed Plover." The bird turned around and Ilya

We had a great trip this weekend. We drove up to the Okanagan via Hwy 3 and our first stop was Manning Park. We stopped to stretch our legs at the park and we hoped to see some Hummingbirds. Sadly not a single hummer feeder was up, which is a real shame because sometimes you get Calliopes here. We saw a Clark’s Nutcracker and then were on our way to Nighthawk. At Nighthawk we quickly found a singing Sage Thrasher. We then went on to Osoyoos where we hoped to see Canada's first breeding Lesser Goldfinches along Kruger Mtn Rd. The breeding record was just confirmed a few days ago by David Bell. Well Cole quickly found a male Lesser Goldfinch but it took 2 hours for the rest of us to find another male who gave us good looks!. He sat there and was singing his heart out. While waiting for him to show up we saw tons of good birds! 38 species in fact including Black-chinned and Calliope Hummer, Say's Phoebe, Black-headed Grosbeaks, Lazuli Buntings, Gray Catbirds and the like!. We

A trip to Arizona produced this accommodating Five-striped Sparrow - Photo: Melissa Hafting I just returned from a week in Arizona. My parents asked me if I wanted to join them on a trip and I jumped at the chance even though it would be extremely hot. Most days were 43C or 109F! So birding had to be done at very early mornings or evening but there were many great birds to be seen! I got all my targets except for one but more on that later. Because I was with my parents I was not able to bird as hard as I liked to or did last year (see our trip report HERE ) but we still did OK!. We started out from Phoenix heading north towards Marble Canyon. As we drove up from the desert we watched the geography change from barren sage brush to barren rocks, to forested green evergreens and large herds of elk back to huge rock canyons! We stayed at the very nice Marbled Canyon Lodge after our 4 hour drive. The lodge and delicious restaurant is run by the Navajo First Nations. I got up early