Fletcher & Dow's Lake with JC Brding

 December 2, 2025

Biding Report by Jane Burgess

Bill and I met at Fletcher's Garden at 8:00 - I was a bit late and he was early. There were lots of birds around the feeder - White-breasted Nuthatch, Black-capped Chickadees, Dark-eyed Junco, Downy Woodpecker, Northern Cardinal and then the late arrivals about 5 House Finch.  Bill had indicated there had been a White-throated Sparrow there as well - I saw it later after walking around Fletcher.

We walked to the back feeder, we saw a couple of Chickadees, we walked through the woods, looking for owls, we came upon some Juncos and Cardinals foraging in the low vegetation.  Some American Goldfinch flew in.   We walked down the hill a bit, nothing, we walked over to the evergreens, nothing.  While leaving the woods we heard something in a pile of branches, we could not see any birds, the sound came from a squirrel eating right dead centre of the pile,  a classic case of not seeing the forest for the trees.  We saw several flocks of Canada Geese flying overhead along with a couple of American Crows.

It was cold so maybe those little birds are smarter than us and are huddled somewhere warmer.  We drove over to the agriculture building to use the facilities, just to get a bit of warmth.  My hands were quite red from the cold so I ran the hand dryer to warm them up.  I even put my mitts up to the hand drying to warm them up.  Sure that helped for maybe 2 minutes.

We are hardy or maybe just focused.  My goal was to get more than 14 species.  We walked down to Dow Lake, the lake looked frozen, but there had to be an open area because we kept seeing Canada Geese taking off.  We walked closer and found the open water, I thought just Mallards, wrong, not a Mallard in sight.  But Common Goldeneye and Lesser Scaup.  Bill had walked closer to the lake than me and he said Barrow's Goldeneye, in fact there were two of them.  Just before we left a Herring Gull flew in.  We heard a Common Raven above us.   Making a grand total of 15 species in our 2 hours of birding.

Time to go home.  I was hosting a birder get-together in the  early afternoon and had to do a few things before they arrived, mainly I wanted to get a few minutes of sleep (that did not happen).

Best bird of the day had to be the 2 Barrow's Goldeneye.  Easy to find amongst maybe 20 Common Goldeneye.  One can easily see the difference when you check out the photos.

Species Noted 

1. Dark-eyed Junco
2. Northern Cardinal
3. Black-capped Chickadee
4. Downy Woodpecker
5. House Finch
6. White-breasted Nuthatch
7. Canada Goose
8. American Goldfinch
9. White-throated Sparrow
10. American Crow
11. Lesser Scaup
12. Common Goldeneye
13. Barrow's goldeneye
14. Herring Gull
15. Common Raven