The Tuesday bird walk group went to the Plummer Road side of the Englishman River Estuary in Parksville last week and counted an impressive array of birds.
The morning was cloudy and calm with peaks sunshine throughout. Nine trumpeter swans flew overhead at the community park. We spotted a northern shrike perched on a shrub near the river and we watched as it flew out for prey and returned to the perch. Far off shore we spotted ten common murre, four marbled murrelets, forty ancient murrelets, forty western grebes, two pigeon guillemots and hundreds of pacific loons on the Strait of Georgia. A Cooper’s hawk was perched close to the viewing platform.
Eleven birders saw and heard 57 species.
— Submitted by Neil Robins