American Redstarts at Starret's Pond, Hope

[scott]

Hi All, on Saturday my wife and I were doing a quick birding walk around Starret's Pond just west of Hope not too far from the Airport. We were getting help with Merlin Sound ID and it kept calling out American Redstart. Wanting to confirm, I went back Sunday with my camera hoping to get a picture. No luck (such furtive little birds) with getting a picture, but I was able to get a visual confirmation of the species and a better sound recording. I'm guessing it was a first-summer male (mostly grey with yellow patches) rather than a female since it was singing repetitively with quite some vigour. I kept its company for close to an hour between the pond and Fraser River as it did several circuits in the heavily wooded area and later heard a second AMRE (!) in a different direction. They were taking turns with their distinctive calls - quite obvious there were two. I didn't get a chance to see the second bird unfortunately. The observations have been submitted to eBird if you're interested in hearing the audio files.

[Gord]

Nice finds, Scott. A nice area at that pond as well.