Submitted by Margaret Graham. Photos by Steve Schmidt except where noted.

Sunday, June 17 was a perfect day for a drive along country roads to look for birds. We started at the bottom of Rose Hill Road and made our first stop at the water tower where we climbed to the lookout to admire the view of Kamloops and the South Thompson River valley. It appears that this is a great party place so we spent some time picking up cans and bottles to add to our coffers.

Back to the original purpose of our trip, we continued up the road, stopping several times to look and listen for birds. Our most productive stop was where several red-naped sapsuckers were nesting and we saw a parent bringing food to its wildly chirping babies hidden in a tree cavity.  It was here that we also identified a MacGillivray’s warbler and a least flycatcher, while red-eyed vireos chirped in the trees and a red-breasted nuthatch made its presence known. We saw several species of sparrows – Lincoln’s, vesper, song, and savannah. There were tree swallows, bluebirds, and house wrens close to the nest boxes on the fence posts. We saw a few water fowl on a pond on Rose Hill Road as well as on Goose Lake including ruddy duck, ring-necked duck, red necked grebe, and spotted sandpiper. We saw some red-tailed hawks and kestrels but no turkey vultures which have been numerous on previous field trips. Altogether, we counted 45 species of birds, our final prize being a pileated woodpecker just before we exited the Goose Lake Road.