I awoke at dawn and whilst everyone was sleeping, took a walk down a slope to the lake by which we were camping. It was a beautiful view with the sun’s first rays clearing the mist from the water on Lightning Lake. I watched it for a moment and then dashed back to get my camera, but in the five minutes it took, most of the mist had vanished!
It seemed quite birdy, so I roused Tom with the promise of a new bird for him (American Crow!) and we took a walk around for a couple of hours. Though we could hear a lot, getting views was tricky and it proved slow, though we got confirmed views of Lincoln’s Sparrow and got on to a Swainson’s Thrush. Returning to the camp, there were some very friendly Clark’s Nutcrackers as well as a Yellow-pine Chipmunks, American Red Squirrel, and a Columbian Ground-squirrel which all sat on the same log briefly, looking like something from a Disney cartoon!
After an alfresco breakfast we walked a few trails (the highlight being a Merlin perched on top of a Beaver lodge) but unfortunately didn’t really have time to do this beautiful place justice as we had a long drive ahead with stop-offs and Michelle wanted to be there before nightfall.
First stop was Princeton as I’d noticed the same supermarket and deli that Michelle had visited briefly last night. Then there were one or two stops at the fruit markets south of Penticon (apparently they are quite famous, locally at least) where we saw our first Black-billed Magpie. Then finally my stop at Vaseux Lake. This was superb and I only wish we could have had longer; Tom, who was getting lots of new birds, was insistent that we stay longer and drive in the dark again, but I thought Michelle would prefer not to! The only downside was that it was teeming with mosquitoes. Michelle who was tired decided to stay in the RV, and after about half an hour of been bitten all over, Sam went back to join her (plucking the courage for the first time to walk on his own, despite his worry of bears!) This was unfortunate as we later found a Beaver. Having had good views of Beaver on previous trips, I ran back to get him but he missed it by a few seconds.
We had excellent views of a number of birds we’d previously seen and also added the following to our trip (or in some cases life lists):
American Coot
Black-necked Grebe
Townsend’s Solitaire
Grey Catbird
Common Nighthawk
Pied-billed Grebe
Western Wood-Pewee
Eastern Kingbird
All these were ticks for Tom, and although the Solitaire was new for me, the highlight was undoubtedly the Nighthawks. We counted 153 as they flocked (north!) late afternoon. This was particularly pleasing as it was a bird Tom really wanted to see and I thought it may have been too late in the year for them. Nearby we also saw the Rocky Mountain form of Mule Deer which has a near all white tail (just a black tip) unlike the Black-tailed (Mule) Deer we were seeing earlier.
Late (again) we dashed north without any further stops, arriving at Bear Creek just north of Kelowna at dusk.
