Week 5 British Columbia Part 1
I’m having some problems with adding video and pictures so I’ve opted to make this part 1 of the week and hopefully once I get it sorted out I’ll post Part 2.
Housekeeping – We are working hard to add pictures to the gallery but it has not happened yet. Maybe by the end of next week. My bird count has been adjusted because the Red-shouldered Hawk I heard with two other birders was not accepted. Blue Jays can mimic the call and so we were asked to remove it from our lists to keep ebird as scientifically accurate as possible so I am even with Jerry. We also “lost” an Ontario bird once we saw it in BC – the House Finch. House Finch in Ontario are still listed as Exotic but countable, then once we saw it in BC where it is considered introduced it took the exotic off the list and added the BC sighting as our first sighting this year. All this to say that my list was messed up number wise so I have redone the whole thing so it corresponds with my ebird list. None of you probably care about this but years from now when I read my blog posts and see that the numbers in the weekly stories do not jive with the list perhaps I will come across this note to remember why…
We flew out to Vancouver on Tuesday and arrived late afternoon with the intention of finding some winter species that we will likely not get in the summer. This is our one and only flight planned for this year. We flew Porter airlines for the first time and we are way too cheap to pay $45 each for an assigned seat so we ended up with the last 2 seats in the plane assigned to us but the stewardesses suggested they would like to move us and so we happily ended up in row 7 instead of 33! with way more leg room and no one behind us and for $0! Thanks Porter! and free beer and wine!
We hoped to have a bit of sunlight left to try for a California Scrub-Jay but we had barely 30 minutes of light when we arrived and we did not see one at their usual spot. We will try again in the morning. We did add three common birds to our year list, our first American Robins, White-crowned Sparrow, and a Lincoln’s Sparrow.
Wednesday was a frosty morning and as we did not eat much on Tuesday we opted to take the time for a complimentary breakfast from our hotel. It was yummy! And yes, I got two servings of meat since Jerry eats vegetarian! Got a bonus bacon sandwich to take for lunch! Made sure I got well fed.
We stopped just after 8 at the Scrub-Jay spot again but not optimistic we would see them as it was frosty and cold. We spent some time checking out the sparrows back in the fields and found the Fox Sparrow we thought we had last night but then second-guessed ourselves. We added Savannah Sparrow too. We wanted to get to the ferry in time to bird the jetty so we needed to leave and just as we were driving out I spotted the Jays in the tree next to the driveway! We got out and both had great views and managed some video and pics of this newly established species in British Columbia. Even better this was a lifer for us. My 775th species in the world. Apologies for the shaky video but it was cold and the Jay was quite a distance from me.
We then headed to the Tsawwasen Ferry to Victoria but stopped part way up the jetty to scope the sides for ducks and hopefully a few lifers – Black Turnstones and Surfbirds. We dipped on the lifers but we managed to add the rarer ducks we look for in Ontario, with relative ease. Harlequin, Barrow’s Goldeneye and Eurasian Wigeon offered us great scope and bin views and gave Jerry the chance to get decent pictures too. We ended up adding 9 species at the jetty including the beautiful Black Oystercatcher. The video was taken with my Iphone as I had left my camera in the car.
We boarded the ferry and discussed our strategy for birding during the 1.5 hour trip in cold and windy conditions. We opted to stay on a lower deck and move from one side to another through the warmth of the ferry checking both sides often for seabirds on the water. People sitting comfortably in the cabin areas must have thought us loony as they watched us come in and out and in and out. When we got too cold to stay out for much time we stood by the doors looking out the windows until we saw a black speck in the water and then rushed out to get bins and camera on the speck. I do not know how Jerry manages to get the pics he does in these circumstances – they are not great pics but they allow us to confirm our identifications. We have only seen most of these birds one or two times before and so we are far from adept at the ID and we have not seen them in winter plumage so there was a lot of checking of Ibird Pro and Sibleys to confirm what we had seen. At the end of the ferry ride we had seen most of the expected species, Common Murre, Pigeon Guillemot, Rhinoceros Auklet, and Brandt’s Cormorant. We missed seeing Murrelets but will hopefully catch up with them on our ocean watches the next few days.
Our first stop in Victoria was our favourite park, Beacon Hill Park. It sits at Mile 0 of the Trans Canada highway and is 740,000 square meters of parkland. It is filled with meandering paths, ponds and gardens and different habitat for birds and wildlife. There has been a Green-tailed Towhee staying there for awhile this winter and it would be a great bird to add to our list. The Towhee summers in the western US and is rare to Canada. We have seen them in Arizona and Texas. We parked near the trail where it has been hanging about and I was not optimistic with the size of the park that we would find the bird but we walked down the path to a scrubby area where there were birds flying about and there was the Green-tailed Towhee! People have been leaving seed for the birds at this spot so it was full of birds taking advantage. We also saw our first Golden-crowned Sparrows and the common Spotted Towhee.
After getting our fill of pictures and video we headed down into the park to a favourite forest area to see what else we could find. There are ducks around the ponds, including American Wigeons by the dozen. i even managed great photos with my iphone they were so close. People feed the small songbirds too so Jerry found a few seeds in his pocket and we fed the Chestnut-backed Chickadees that were plentiful in the area.
They have a small petting farm in the park and they have Indian Peafowl (Peacock) wandering around. While they are not countable as a species as they are not “free” I had to take some pictures because the sun on their feathers is beautiful.
We added a few other species on our walk through the park and then headed to a quick ocean watch before dusk but there was nothing new and only a few birds in the water. We checked into our favourite hotel in Victoria, the Helms Inn which is right beside Beacon Hill Park and then walked over to a market to purchase a few things for a quick dinner.
Just outside the market I saw three small birds fly into a tree and yelled out “Bushtit”! Yes, that is the name of a tiny nondescript grey/brown bird. We did not have bins or camera with us so we took a few unfortunate silhouette pics since it was almost dark. We were super excited to end our day with an added bird giving us a total of 31 birds added on the trip so far.
Oops! Not so fast! We got a note from the ebird reviewer after dinner that our Barrow’s Goldeneye is actually a hybrid between a Barrow’s Goldeneye and a Common Goldeneye so sadly not countable. So make that 30 species so far.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of this week…