I starting walking over to the Aquatic Center and saw a pair of Barrow's Goldeneye feeding right next to the beach. I waited until the sun came up and started taking photos of them.
I also got photos of Bonaparte's and Short-billed Gulls, Pelagic Cormorant, and Horned Grebe.
Also seen from the beach were Bufflehead, Glaucous-winged Gull, Western Grebe, and Bald Eagle. Around 90 American Wigeon were feeding in the grass in the park across the channel. I continued on to the Aquatic Center and met four other birders searching the area for the flycatcher. They had not seen it yet. We exchanged phone numbers so we could call each other if it was spotted. I knew that it was often seen in the trees along Beach Avenue, so I slowly walked back and forth down along there. Just southeast of Jervis Street, I met a birding couple and while I was asking them if they had any luck, I looked over to the next tree and there it was! We watched it while I called the other group on the phone that were watching for it at the Aquatic Center and told them that we had the bird. They came up and we pointed it out to them. It was a pretty warm day, so insects were probably more available. That might be why the bird spent around half of its time in the top half of the trees. Occasionally, it would come down to the lower branches, drop to the ground, grab an insect, and fly back up into the tree. One of my priorities was to try to get a photo of it with its tail spread, but the bird was so quick that it was very tough to do. I managed to get this blurry one after many tries.
I got some other photos showing different angles of the tail including a couple showing the interesting feather pattern around its cloaca.
Other birds seen while following the flycatcher included Anna's Hummingbird, Black-capped and Chestnut-backed Chickadees, and the "Oregon" form of the Dark-eyed Junco.
By 1:00 PM, about a dozen birders were watching the flycatcher. I figured I wasn't going to get any better photos than I already had, so I decided to get out of Vancouver before rush hour and headed south back towards Washington. Before reaching the border around the town of Delta, I passed a line of trees bordering the Vancouver landfill that contained at least 50 Bald Eagles. I wanted to stop and take a photo, but there was nowhere to safely pull over and do that. It took about 20 minutes to go through customs. At the booth, the border agent asked me what brought me all the way out to western Canada from Pennsylvania. When I told her, I came to see one small bird, her eyes opened up, and she asked what kind of bird it was. I told her the story about the Taiga Flycatcher that was from Asia, was the first-ever record for Canada, and that it had been there since Christmas. She saw my camera on the passenger seat and asked me if I got a photo of it. I said that I got a lot of them. She told me to have a good day, and I told her that I already did.
With my main purpose of the trip already "in the bag", I did a quick search on eBird for a recent, local Red-breasted Sapsucker sighting. The Sehome Hill Arboretum in Bellingham had one, so I headed there. I parked near the Jersey Street entrance and hiked the fairly steep trail up to the observation tower. Along the way, I saw a few Golden-crowned Kinglets and Dark-eyed Juncos, but not much else. At the top, there was a pretty nice view from the observation tower.
On the way back down from the car, I noticed a "gray bump" on the side of a large tree trunk and realized that it was a Barred Owl! I was far enough away that it wasn't even concerned about me while I took these photos of it.
I continued down I-5 to the Tulip Inn in Mt. Vernon and stayed there for the night.
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