2016 Birding Blog: Victoria Day at Iona Regional Park

Where better to spend a holiday Monday than a sewage lagoon? Actually Iona also has some good habitat outside the lagoon and is very popular with cyclists and walkers.

However, I punched in the secret code that allowed me in to the sewage facility to start my morning. There are four settling ponds on the complex, filled to varying depths of water. The South East and South West ponds are good for shorebirds and dabbling ducks. The diving ducks prefer the deeper North West pond.

As I came in by the SW pond, I saw four Blue-winged Teal. They were in my post on May 8th, but this time they were a in closer camera range. You can see a small bit of the blue on the wings of the left-most duck.

Blue-winged Teal - Iona Regional Park, Richmond BC

In the same ponds were some mallards, including the white one on the right. This duck is leucistic, a condition in which there is partial loss of pigmentation in an animal resulting in white, pale, or patchy colouration of the skin, hair, feathers, scales or cuticle, but not the eyes. (Thanks to Wikipedia).

Mallard - Iona Regional Park, Richmond BC

The best photo of the day was the Pectoral Sandpiper below. This shorebird was likely on the way north to breed. The bright colours of the plumage are notable, when it returns south in a couple of months it will be much duller and browner.

Pectoral Sandpiper - Iona Regional Park, Richmond BC

That was it for the sewage ponds, I then took a walk around the Outer Ponds by the parking area and restrooms. I used to depend on a trip to the Okanagan to see Yellow-headed Blackbirds, but discovered a couple of years ago that a few of these birds nest at Iona. It did not take me long to find a male in the marsh area making his distinctive klaxon like call.

Yellow-headed Blackbird - Iona Regional Park, Richmond BC

Another common bird in the marsh is the Common Yellowthroat, as small warbler. They are much easier to hear than see, but will pop up to a pishing sound (but only once). The male is very striking, a female will be featured in a future post.

Common Yellowthroat - Iona Regional Park, Richmond BC

Many of my recent posts have included Rufous Hummingbirds away from bird feeders. It's nice to catch them in a natural setting. It is primarily solitary males that I've seen. This may be explained by their total non-involvement in rearing the young after breeding.

Rufous Hummingbird - Iona Regional Park, Richmond BC

My next stop on the circuit was by the Fraser River, where there are Purple Martin nesting boxes mounted on pilings in the river. I assume this is to prevent land-based predators from climbing up and attacking the young.

The Martins are colony nesters, so boxes are clustered together. Unfortunately, they were sparsely occupied this year. I did photograph a few of these largest members of the Swallow family. The male is the darker of the two birds.