Canada and Alaska 2 - Banff

 

Arriving in Banff and having a quick look around I saw my birding plans start to unravel. Banff is a nice town but there were a lot of people there and according to locals we were lucky that we had arrived early in  the season before the crowds arrived. Worse still there was an absence of birds. No swallows nesting under the Bow River bridge, which looked as though it had recently been renovated. No ducks or bird life along the river and a late afternoon walk around the Fenland Trail, which has a bird list of 155 recorded on e-bird, gave me nothing at all.

There also seemed to be a lot of snow on the mountains. In one respect we were happy, as we had come early in the season, to see the Rockies with snow on them but there looked to be a bit more than we had expected. Again talking to locals we found that Canada had suffered one of its coldest winters on record and that Spring was running two to three weeks late. All my careful planning on hitting the spring migration was going wrong.

The next morning I checked out the Bow River and the bridge again with my only sightings being Magpies, American Crows and House Sparrows. Fortunately Cascade Gardens (e-bird list 53) had a few Dark-eyed Juncos foraging on the grass. These look like the Slate-coloured subspecies and are resident year round in the area. 

Dark-eyed Junco - male

Dark-eyed Junco - Female

The rest of the day was spent on a scenic tour along the Icefield Parkway up to the Bow Summit and Athabasca Glacier. Very impressive but the Lake Louise area was covered in snow, they had been ice skating on the lake only a few days earlier and there was no access to Peyto Lake, both planned birding spots. 

Some of my main targets, Clark's Nutcracker, Steller's Jay, Gray Jay where to be found in this area. Instead I had American Crows and Black-billed Magpies. The one consolation was Cliff Swallows which I knew nested on the Lake Louise Hotel. I could see the swallows but I could not get a decent picture or see enough detail to identify the bird. Fortunately the distinctive nests were visible, if distant, and if you blow the picture up big enough you can just make out the red face of a Cliff Swallow emerging from one of the nests under construction.

Cliff Swallow nests - managing to defeat the anti nest defenses

Also at Lake Louise, I got caught out by this one, I thought Chipmunk but when trying to sort out which Chipmunk I found it was a Golden-mantled ground squirrel. Looks as though it is also in search of spring and some snow free ground.

Golden-mantled Ground Squirrel

Golden-mantled Ground Squirrel

Further down the road, at one of the viewpoints, there were a few birds harassing the tourists for food.

Brown-headed Cowbird

Brown-headed Cowbird - Female

Raven as UK

A stop at the services at the Saskatchewan river crossing gave me another new bird which after much searching I have down as a female Purple Finch.

Purple Finch -female

Purple Finch - female

Our brief stay in Banff was coming to an end and I hadn't seen many birds. Our plan for the last day was an early morning visit to the Cave and Basin area for me whilst Sue had a lie in and then a  trip on the Banff Gondola up to Sulphur Mountain where I again had hopes of seeing the Clark's Nutcracker, Fox Sparrows and other high altitude birds that I had pencilled in on my wish list.

The Gondola trip on Sulphur Mountain is easy to deal with. The the top was mostly snowed in although the boardwalk out to the Cosmic Ray Station on Sanson's Peak was open. There were snow flurries around and a cold wind. The only birds seen were Ravens and a few Crows. The views were spectacular but perhaps not so spectacular if you were more interested in the birds. Venturing further afield on the mountain, in search of some avian life, was out of the question without full winter mountain gear and a good knowledge of the area.

I was left with the Cave and Basin area which is fed by hot springs as my best option for picking up a few birds. See the next blog for details.