Canada and Alaska 1 - Calgary

 

With Covid restrictions easing Sue and I finally got the go ahead for a Rocky Mountaineer and Alaska Cruise tour we had booked back in 2019. You couldn't class it as a birding holiday but it had been planned to coincide with the spring migration and I expected to be able to free up plenty of time to go looking for birds. Sue does not generally show any interest in sightseeing between dawn and breakfast and there would also be long periods at sea off the western coast of Canada and Alaska for Pelagic birding.

It didn't all go to plan, as you will see, and there were some disappointments on the birding front but I still came away with a number of life ticks and a few good pictures.

We flew into Calgary for an overnight stop arriving late afternoon giving me an hour in the evening and a few hours the following morning before we needed to board a coach for the trip up to Banff for a three night stay in the National Park. One of the real benefits of air travel east to west is that whatever time you go to sleep you are wide awake about three in the morning and ready to go birding.

There are some great birding places around Calgary but given the time available the only one I could get to was Prince's Island Park in the Bow River just a few minutes from the hotel where we were staying. I got off to a good start, Canada Goose, hundreds of them but at least they were genuine, Mallards, Starlings, Rock Doves, that is feral pigeon to me, Common Merganser (Goosander), Red-breasted Merganser, and even an American Robin which I had seen for the first time in England only a few weeks earlier.

American Robin

Not the start I was looking for but there were other birds about and even a few decent pictures to be taken.

Northern Flicker

There are two variants of the Northern Flicker, the red shafted in the west and the yellow shafted in the east. This particular bird is probably an intergrade showing features of both, the red malar of the red shafted but the red on the nape suggesting a yellow shafted.

Black-billed Magpie - Pica Hudsonia

Black-capped Chickadee

Juvenile Coopers Hawk

I think the identification of the hawk is correct but unfortunately it didn't like having the camera pointed at it and flew off before I could get a view from the front.

American Wigeon

Song Sparrow

I also found this White-throated Sparrow whilst walking to the park before dawn. It appears to have flown into one of the high rise buildings and was lying stunned on the pavement. The picture was taken in the dark at 1/3 sec on a 600mm lens so is not the best, however, I am pleased to report that after a few minutes it seemed to recover and hopped away into some cover.

White-throated Sparrow - pre dawn 1/3sec on a 600mm lens

It does make you wonder if birding around the base of the high rise buildings would have been more productive than birding the park.

Also seen around the park were American Crow, Brown-headed Cowbird, variants of the Fliker and a Woodpecker heard but not seen.

The trip up to Banff viewing through the coach window added Bald Eagles and Trumpeter Swans to my holiday list. There were also a few smaller birds that I could not identify and a good number of places that I would have liked to stop and explore.

See the details of Banff in the next blog.