Birding The Point

Jenny was heading out to Sooke with her family today (no room for me in the car, unfortunately!) so I spent and hour or so at Clover Point this morning.
It was pretty much business as usual, although the water was relatively devoid of numbers of birds. There were common murres, rhinoceros auklets and pigeon guillemots in modest volume, and nowhere near as many as I've been seeing there recently. A single marbled murrelet was lingering close offshore.
Among a couple of hundred California gulls and a dozen or so glaucous-winged gulls on the rocks (hmm -glaucous-winged gulls on the rocks, sounds like a particularly unappetising cocktail..), were 9 Heermann's gulls and 5 black oystercatchers. Just 6 mew gulls were floating around just offshore.
A single least sandpiper flew in, landing briefly on the rocks and picking through the seaweed. A further 5 peeps (probably leasts, too) flew by, heading south.
A lone red-necked phalarope was out on the water.
Five harlequin ducks were present and the usual small flotilla of surf scoter were in Ross Bay.
A couple of barn swallows were flitting backwards and forwards over the rocks.

In Da House

I took a stroll down to Government House in the early evening. There was a little bit of activity along the woodland trail, where highlights included a warbling vireo, olive-sided flycatcher and rufous hummingbird. Presumably, these birds were all off passage.
Regarding rufous hummers - I can only surmise that their relative scarcity in Victoria (as opposed to Nanaimo, where they are common in summer) is down to the abundance of Anna's hummingbird (which is harder to find as one travels up island) in and around the city? Although one might imagine that the Anna's considerably earlier nesting period would reduce conflict and competition, there seem to be very few breeding rufous's in what appears to be suitable habitat down here. If anyone has any theories, I'd be interested to hear them....   

Ross Bay Walk

Just managed a post-work walk down to Ross Bay, Victoria with Jenny this evening.
Even still, there were plenty of interesting birds around. I could see that the gull roost at Clover Point had built quite a bit, and it became even more apparent as approximately 150 gulls were flushed up into the air by a passing bald eagle. At range, I could only make out one adult Heermann's gull among the numerous glaucous-winged and California gulls.   
Bobbing about on the water were a few rhino auklets, 3 harlequin ducks and 5 surf scoters. A party of 4 white-winged scoter flew by. That's all 3 scoter species here in the past few days... what a strange summer..!

There's a great gull here, man. (Heermann's gull - get it?)

Had a stroll down to the waterfront and checked out Ross Bay and Clover Point today.

I went via Moss Rock Park where I narcissistically took a self portrait - purely to illustrate the wonderful view you understand...
While bumbling around here, I came across a lizard - the first I've seen here. It looked pretty much like a wall lizard, and when I checked what lizard species occur on the island, I discovered that it was a wall lizard. Apparently they were introduced here sometime on the 1970s. I don't know, us European gets everywhere!

A few harlequin ducks were feeding close offshore, while further out the expected rhinoceros auklets and a couple of pigeon guillemots were seen.
Among the growing numbers of glaucous-winged and California gulls was a splendid Heermann's gull. I was 'scopeless today, so I'm afraid I can offer no improvement on the very sketchy pic on my last post. As the summer progresses the number of Heermanns' will increase significantly, so I'm sure I'll get more than a few chances to get some reasonable shots of these stunning larids. 
   
Later, I took a wander around the Government House grounds, but it was pretty quiet - as has been typical of late.