Go Big & Bird B.C.

Island Time Last week I packed up my car and headed to southern Vancouver Island. With my SUV acting as a mobile motel, a fully stocked cooler, and a small propane stove, I could be very Covidish antisocial. On my list were some rarities that had been hanging around for a while like the Tufted Duck in the Duncan sewage ponds and the American Black Duck in Yellowpoint. I had told myself I wouldn’t make the mistake I made    with the Red Backed Shrike last year. It showed up in Powell River and I told myself, I’d be over there in a few days anyhow, so 4 days later, I go over and of course it had gone by then.     I think the birding gods were smiling on me those couple days.    Almost everything I was looking for, I found. Some of them were almost too easy.    I drove by the Victoria Airport to find the Mountain Bluebirds ( I knew I could find them later in the year, but why wait). I slowed my car down and there they were, 5 meters away, on the fenc...

LOW HANGING FRUIT Well, January has come and gone and it was the usual mixed bag of weather. I don’t think I had a particular highlight so far. I guess the only  so called failure would be spending over 4 hours scoping  for the Northern Mockingbird.  A couple hours in, I got excited.. small grey bird, long tail, then dang.. it had a black mask and no white on the wings, it’s a Northern Shrike.  Some of the birds like the Tundra Swan and Prairie Falcon are only here for a short time, but most of the ones I have seen are here year round and common ( easy pickings).   I was checking my list and couldn’t believe I hadn’t picked up a Cedar Waxwing yet. It’s just an example of some low hanging fruit yet to be had. I like to play around with numbers and was curious about how much time it took to see new birds.  This rate of new birds/ hour will likely decrease as the year progresses as “new” birds will be fewer and I move from birding just to see what I find to mo...

  A DEBATE WITH SELF The second half of January started off with a bang. We had a nice sunny day so I headed off to Boundary Bay to see if I could locate the Red Knot, Willet, and Pacific Golden Plover that had been reported here. I walked up onto the dyke and into a group of 8 or so birders, all with their scopes pointed at the mudflats.  Almost immediately,  one mentioned that she had the Red Knot in her scope, “ just down and to the right of that log”, and another said he had the Plover “ on the right side of that clump of seaweed with all the Black Bellied Plovers”. So within a minute or so I had good looks at both these birds.  This got me to thinking, Is this really fair to get these birds so easily ? How hard did I really work to get these birds?  I simply walked up and had the birds basically handed to me.   On the other hand, isn’t this a great example of people willingly sharing their time and expertise? Since no matter what we do or accomplis...

T he start of this Big year didn’t go exactly as I thought it might. I was anticipating getting up on Jan. 1, and while having coffee, getting a few ticks from my feeders. However, they were uncharacteristically quiet.  I suppose no one told the birds they shouldn’t be out celebrating on New Years Eve. I got the first bird of the year at Maple Ridge Park. An American dipper was singing loudly on rocks under the bridge. So if an AMDI was #1 on the year, I wonder what the last number will be.  With non essential travel restrictions in place I don’t expect I’ll get out of the Metro Vancouver and Fraser Valley zones in January or February.   In 2020, 176 species were recorded here so I think I’ll be kept busy.  The first week was a wet, windy and wild one. Nevertheless, every day I picked up multiple new ticks.  This is the easy part. All the common birds will get my numbers up quickly.  Most of my time was spent in Pitt Meadows picking up easy ones like Great ...

  I have decided that 2020 will be a B.C Big Year for me, well, a modified Big Year.  I think of a Big Year  as one that is an all out quest to get every single tick possible. Instead, I'll go for as many species as I can, but family and other commitments will take priority.  I will need to draw a limit as to time spent and distances travelled.      If, for example, the elusive Grey Headed Belly Scratcher shows up in the Dease Lake area, I won't be making that long drive for just that one bird.      I will set  target number for total species and new B.C. species.  Looking back, my highest number of ticks for B.C. in a year is 288, and I see that on Ebird, the average of the top 3 counts in B.C. for past few years is about 325.  Based on that, 325 seems a reasonable but challenging goal.  Since there are areas of B.C. that I haven't birded, I think adding 20 new species to my B.C. total is a reasonable goal. So, ...