Shorebirding the Salmon Arm

 

My original plan for Monday had been to look for Dusky Grouse with Gary and start the drive back to Washington State around lunchtime. However, with the morning now freed up and Stuart scheduled to visit the doctor, I decided to make a longish detour to bird the Salmon Arm, north of Kelowna.

Salmon Arm is the premier shorebird location in interior BC and I had originally intended to include it on my itinerary. However, due to schedule constraints in returning to California, I had dropped the idea. Now that I was a couple of days ahead of schedule, I decided to go there. Similar to E WA and NE OR, the interior of BC is more on the shorebird flyway that passes through the Great Plains and Texas than the Pacific Coast. As a result, species such as Baird’s, Pectoral, Solitary, Stilt and Semipalmated Sandpipers are proportionately much commoner than on the Pacific Coast. Given the Salmon Arm probably offers more extensive habitat than any other location in the interior Pacific Northwest, the numbers of these species can be comparatively mind-blowing. Since I felt it was unlikely I would return to interior BC in mid-August again, it was very much a ‘now-or-never’ moment that seemed worth an extra four hours’ driving.

Gary had advised me that seeing the birds well would require sloshing through the mudflats and suggested that bare feet might be best option as rubber boots often get sucked right off your feet in the cloying mud! I decided to see how well I could see the birds with a scope and then resort to rubber boots or bare feet if that was necessary.

On arrival, I parked at the base of wharf and walked out to scan the area. There were extensive mudflats either side of the wharf, but virtually all the shorebirds were on the flats to the west and too far for easy identification. There were a few shorebirds near the wharf, including seven Solitary Sandpipers, which seemed to like feeding underneath the wharf itself. A large flock of Baird’s Sandpipers was swirling around, but shorebird numbers were clearly lower than those on a checklist from a few days previously.

After reparking the car a bit further west, I put on my walking boots and eventually found a way to get down to the vegetated margin of the flats. Walking through the wet long marsh grass got my boots pretty wet and I considered keeping them for sloshing through the mudflats. However, checking them revealing that the water had not soaked through to the inside of the boot, so I took them off and left them on the edge of the mudflats and proceeded on bare feet. This was a good decision in hindsight as I spent much of the next two hours in ankle-deep mud.

I particularly wanted to see Stilt Sandpipers as this species, while regular, is not guaranteed in the Vancouver area, where I intend to make a future shorebirding trip. I slogged out through the mud to get closer to a flock of yellowlegs, which seemed likely to hold some Stilt Sandpipers. The first ‘good’ bird was a first-year Franklin’s Gull. After enjoying this, I set to work to go though the yellowlegs flock, which comprised of no less 75 birds, along with a couple each of Greater Yellowlegs and Long-billed Dowitcher, with over 50 Red-necked Phalaropes out on the water. However, there were no Stilt Sandpipers and the next hour proved extremely frustrating as the Baird’s Sandpiper flock kept flying around over the area and rarely landing and never close.

I passed time away looking at various eclipse ducks such as Common Goldeneye, Bufflehead and Hooded Merganser, which would never be around migrant shorebirds down in Southern California. A few Bonaparte’s Gulls including a bird in full juvenile plumage, which I am not sure I have seen before. A nice alternate-plumaged Black-bellied Plover was a bird I was not really expecting.

Baird's Sandpipers

Eventually the Baird’s flock settled down and I was able to get closer. Over the next hour, the flock would frequently fly around and reshuffle, progressively including more and more other calidrids. My high count of Baird’s Sandpipers was 76, which I think is significantly higher than I have ever seen at one time previously, although there had been over 300 just prior to my visit. Although a subsequent check of ebird showed them to the regular, I was surprised to find two juvenile Sanderlings in the flock.

Juvenile Sanderling

Initially, there were only two Least Sandpipers present but by the time I left, there were over hundred, along with a few each of Western and Semipalmated, and two juvenile Pectorals. With the apparent continuous arrival of new calidrids, I felt optimistic that some Stilt Sandpipers might have come in too. A recheck of the Lesser Yellowlegs immediately revealed four juvenile Stilt Sandpipers for a satisfying ending to the visit.

After slogging my way back to the car, I grabbed some food for a local supermarket and headed down to Kelowna for a successful ‘twitch’ of a Green Heron there. Unfortunately, my attempts to find a Clark’s Grebe a bit further south came up short. I then headed to down the US border and drove towards Twisp before stopping on a forest road to get some sleep for the night.