Today was a birding day, not a chasing day.  While I hoped to pick up a species or two (or five), there was no specific bird that I had my heart set on.

It’s been a while since I headed west to Jordan River and beyond.  The weather forecast wasn’t great, but as anyone on the west coast can attest, that doesn’t mean much.  A rain forecast can mean 5 minutes of drizzle or a full day full on deluge.  You won’t know until you get there.

I was accompanied today by Ian Toews, a videographer who is working on a project on Vancouver Island birders.  If you bird on the island, you may see him soon at a birding hotspot near you!  He’s done some amazing work in other regions, including some stunning videos on grasslands.  You can see samples of his work here.

Our first stop was at the former Jordan River Campground.  It is still open to the public during daylight hours, but fear over the possible failure of the upriver dam during a catastrophic earthquake has prompted the CRD to close the campsites.  A shame, IMHO.  Most of the birds were well off shore, but a few gulls obliged by resting on the rocky spit.

If you look closely, you’ll see my first California Gull of my big year!

Ian Cruickshank and friends joined us briefly to help scope the waters.  Marbled Murrelets, cormorants, Common Goldeneyes, assorted grebes and scoters, and a few other species were flying or swimming by, pretty much all headed east.  Hmmmm… did they know something we didn’t know?  Thanks to Ian’s keen eyes, I was also able to add Brant to the year list.

Ian C. and friends left to go hiking and Ian T. and I headed west to Port Renfrew and Botanical Beach.  The weather was still holding when we started out on the loop trail, but shortly after we made it to the shore, the drizzle started in earnest.  Although I carry a lot of things, I felt bad for Ian given his camera and tripod weigh much more than mine!

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However, even without the birds, Botanical Beach is a stunning place to visit, rain or shine.

Tuesday, I return to Courtenay, and to chasing.  Mountain Bluebird and Marbled Godwit, I am coming to see you!  Then it will be off to Port Alberni to see what I can see there, gradually filling in my regional district/county lists.

Pine Grosbeaks and a certain Harris’s Sparrow are also on the list I hope to see this time around.

and…

A Great Gray Owl has shown up at Reifel Bird Sanctuary in Vancouver. Could it be the Quadra Island owl?  If so, my search for that bird is probably over for the spring, but I’m still standing by, just in case!

For better or worse, there haven’t been a lot of rarities reported on Vancouver Island in 2015. Many of the birds I have been chasing have simply been out of season, so are likely to get on the list sooner or later–but I’d prefer sooner.  But the only way to find any uncommon or rare birds is to get out birding, and I’m trying to do that pretty much every day.

After the Great Gray Owl (grrr..), the Harris’s Sparrow is my next most-desired known bird, so I headed back to the Nanaimo River Estuary Saturday morning.  I made a quick run through all of the spots in Duncan where the Sandhill Crane had been seen, hoping to get a quick tick (if you consider a third try a quick tick), but could not find the bird. I found several flocks of swans throughout the area, but they wouldn’t tell me where the crane was.   I wasn’t particularly concerned as I intended to search more thoroughly on the way home in the afternoon.  On to the Harris’s Sparrow. As I approached Nanaimo, I got a call from Derrick Marven.  The crane was resighted–in exactly the first spot I’d looked for it!

It wasn’t raining in Nanaimo, and for once there was no fog.  The Nanaimo River was at near flood stage, though, and I learned that the road had been underwater on Friday.  The Rough-legged Hawk was still conspicuous, and although the trails were submerged in several places, it was a good day to be birding in the estuary. Walking the length of the hedgerow where the bird has most frequently been seen, I came across a few birds, but not the one I was looking for.  When I walked back to the main trail, there was a good-sized flock of sparrows–mostly juncos–in the blackberry bushes and in the big Garry oak.   For a brief moment, I thought I saw the Harris’s, but it flew off and I couldn’t relocate it.  Sadly, not good enough for a tick.  While I was looking, Mike and Wendy Woodworth arrived and checked out the area as well.  Despite the decent weather, there were more dog walkers than birders in the area on Saturday. The juncos returned a couple of times, but the rest of the flock was apparently abducted by aliens.  After a two and a half hour search, I decided to cut my losses and head back for the Sandhill Crane.

A Sandhill Crane is a large bird.  One you really shouldn’t be able to miss, especially in the midst of dozens of swans. Yet, somehow, I had missed this bird several times.  I was determined to stay in Duncan until I got this one!  When I arrived at Bench Rd, there were about four times as many swans on the field as there had been in the morning.  Derrick had spotted the bird way across the field, but that was about four hours earlier.  I scanned iwth my binoculars.  I scanned with my scope.  No crane.  I tried from a different angle.  Nope. So I went back to my original spot and tried again.  Before I could even raise my bins, there it was.  Here’s a photo.  Can you see it?

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Fortunately, there was a road just beyond these swans (and crane), so I drove around behind them to try to get some better pictures.

It was a great relief to finally pick up a new bird for my year list, now at 135.

This week, I am going birding in a couple of new places. No known birds to find there.  Just a day or two to explore.

I suspect those of you who have been following my (mis)adventures know without me saying, that I did NOT find the Great Gray Owl. Again.

As it turned out, that was just the beginning of a day that would end with no new species for my list.  But there were still adventures to be had!  I started the day by travelling the roads on south Quadra Island, phone at the ready in case Carla called with news of the owl.  When it became clear that it wasn’t putting in an appearance in her yard, I decided to follow her advice and search the Community Centre Trails, situated between two recurring locations for this Great Gray Ghost.

Any day out birding is a good day, and the trails take you through a beautiful forest.  Bird numbers were low, but there were a few interesting sights.

There was a tree festooned with grosgrain ribbons, each with what looked like new year’s resolutions, favourite things or wishes.

I came across the carcass of a cat that I am pretty sure was predated by the elusive Great Gray Owl.

I found what I can only believe is an oyster mushroom nursery.

But alas, the only whitewash I discovered turned out to be tree sap not cherished owl droppings.

Word of a Mountain Bluebird sighting and knowing that there were several other year birds waiting for me on the big island prompted me to cut the day short and get on with the trip south.

On arrival at the Superstore in Courtenay, it became clear that I was a long, long way from the bluebird, and between me and it was a lot of private property. I scoped from several roadside angles, but no flashes of blue for me!

Moving on to the dump–what kind of big year would it be if I didn’t visit a dump?–I found an impressive show of eagles.  There must have been at least a couple of hundred in the area, and there had been a recent report of a juvenile Golden Eagle.

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And there, at the bottom of this tree, sat a very pale, large eagle!

At this point, the rain was pouring down.  Through my misty scope, I could see some white in the rump/tail area.  I fired off a bunch of shots with two cameras (one of which is still recovering from the soaking) with plans to scrutinize them when I got home.  I managed to get a little closer,  understandably attracting the attention of the landfill staff.  While talking with a very nice manager about the birds, someone fired a shot and they all took off–of course, without me getting to see the light bird leave the tree.  On closer inspection of the photos, this bird turned into a weirdly coloured Bald Eagle.  There were molt limits, so it wasn’t a juvenile, and far less white than I would have expected on an older but still immature eagle, but try as I might, I could not turn it into a Golden.

Given the time, I had decided to bypass the Marbled Godwit in favour of the Harris’s Sparrow in Nanaimo.  I’d arrived around 4 on Monday and wanted to get there earlier to increase my chances of finding it.   My GPS showed I could make it by just after 3.  The Marbled Godwit hadn’t been reported since Jan 10 in any case.  On Monday I had thoroughly searched the airpark and area without seeing it.

The day was dark and dreary and by the time I arrived at the Nanaimo Estuary, most of the birds were already hunkered down.  I managed to find a small flock of White-crowned Sparrows feeding in the hedge-row that, in my assessment, was east of the big oak tree, but I will fully admit to being directionally challenged.  I’m working on that!  There was no Harris’s Sparrow among them.  I also found a flock of Dark-eyed Juncos, similarly unendowed with a Harris’s Sparrow.  The Rough-legged Hawk, though, was putting on quite the show.  Two men had gone to the viewing platform and the hawk had flown right over to sit in the tree next to it.  That made me wonder if they had mice in their pockets.  They didn’t.  They didn’t even know what kind of hawk it was, but I wonder if someone has been feeding this bird.

With barely enough light left to see it, I raced to Duncan to find the Sandhill Crane without even stopping for tea.  I headed straight to the field on Bench Road where more than 200 swans had been loafing two days earlier.  What a surprise!  Out in the field, there were maybe five swans. Where had everyone gone?   It was too late to check any of the other recommended spots so I headed home.

Finally stopping for a tea near Goldstream, I checked my emails and found that two interesting things had happened in Duncan before I passed through.  The farmer where the swans (and crane) had been, had chased them all away that afternoon. And someone reported a Northern Hawk Owl!  Note to self:  Check email more frequently!

Yesterday, a new report of the Marbled Godwit surfaced.  It might have been there as I drove by the site.  Erghhh!

Which takes me to today’s blog title. As birders, we become familiar with local sites by local names. Updates to eBird and listservs often don’t carry the level of detail that the original reports do. I’ve been guilty of this. “Known bird in usual location” is a typical comment on a recurring rare bird.   Today, I learned that the Marbled Godwit at the Courtenay Airpark isn’t actually at the airpark- it’s been seen along the shoreline  near the airpark.  I had searched that area, too, so I’m confident it wasn’t visible when I was there last week, but I also spent a fair amount of time searching the airpark itself.  No real loss, and I might have turned up something unusual there as well, but it does point out to me that updates should repeat at least some of the location details of original reports.

For the sake of “foreigners”,  details that can be found on maps are very helpful  (King’s Pond-Ascot and Queensbury instead of just King’s Pond, for instance).  Just over one month into my big year, and I’m already seeing how I will change the way I bird and report birds going forward!

Well, Tuesday was another one of those days–you know–foggy, foggy, foggy.

The plan for the day was to search out the Marbled Godwit (last posted to eBird on Jan 10), Yellow-billed Loon, and of course, the Great Gray Owl.

I headed to the Courtenay Airpark where the godwit has most often been seen. There is a great trail network that runs right around the airpark and takes you right along the waterfront.  Lots of ducks and gulls around, and several new species for my “county” list, but no Marbled Godwit.  I’ll probably try again on my way south.  There was also a flyby by a warbler that I really wish I’d been able to see a little better.  Probably a Yellow-rumped, but….

Next stop was the beach at Singing Sands Rd.  I am picking up a good number of geographic lifers on this trip, and this is one of them.  Former RPBO bander-in-charge Jukka Jantunen has reported as many as ten Yellow-billed Loons from this site.  I only wanted one!  By the time I got there, the fog had lifted enough to allow a view over the water, but the light was still muted enough to make IDs difficult.  There were actually two loons on my wish list, but try as I might, I couldn’t turn any of the many Common Loons into either Red-throated or Yellow-billed.  I’ll try for these again on this trip as well.

If you too are suffering from erectile deficiency, he also starts amerikabulteni.com buy levitra australia facing problem in his relationship. A powerful medication for the treatment of pulmonary hypertension but accidentally scientists found that it is helping men achieve viagra cheapest harder erections. Therefore, it offers effective natural treatment for weak erection. achat cialis cipla You can buy these herbal remedies viagra 100mg sales for spermatorrhea treatment from reputed online stores. Feeling the need for another tick, I decided to go up, waaaay up.  My GPS said that I was only half an hour away from the Alpine Lodge at Mt. Washington. It’s been a very poor snow year, so I was confident that the road would be in good shape, and maybe, just maybe, I could find some Gray Jays.  This is a species that I knew I could get later in the year, but since there had been no new reports from Quadra, I headed west.  Interestingly, on the drive up, I did not see a single bird flying or along the edge of the road.  Maybe this wasn’t a slam-dunk.  A tip from the desk clerk at the Kingfisher Lodge made me choose the Raven Lodge as my destination, and as soon as I arrived, I could hear the chatter of a couple of jays.  At the back of the lodge, there was a small group of about five Gray Jays.  Success, and species 134!

I thought this might be a chance to get some great photos, but within about five minutes, they were gone!  I hung around the lodges for another fifteen minutes or so, and except for a distant foggy flyer, there were no birds to be found.  This time, my timing was perfect!

Down the mountain and 40 km north, I boarded the ferry to Quadra Island to once again try to track down the Great Gray Owl.  There have been no reports since last Saturday, so we’re back in “needle in a haystack” mode.  Quadra Island is jam-packed with suitable habitat, and this afternoon I spent a couple of hours wandering through some of it. There weren’t a lot of birds around, but I did get to spend some time with a Pileated Woodpecker.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a report in the morning. This time, I will be in striking range!

A new week, a new approach.  Yes, I am heading back to Quadra Island to look for the Great Gray Owl, but I decided to take a slower strategy, stopping along the way to look for some other birds that have been reported on the island.

While others have had great luck with Golden Eagle as a parking lot bird (FROM the Tim Hortons parking lot, not IN the parking lot), I haven’t, but I pledge to try to stop for at least a brief look when I pass by.  There is a pair of Golden Eagles that can sometimes be seen from the Amy Rd. doughnut shop.  Today, the ridge was fogged in, but I predict there will be many other opportunities.

A trip to the Cowichan Bay Dock Road revealed a lot of changes since the last time I was there.  I didn’t realize it had been so long!  Birders used to “sneak” along the road, doing their best to stay out of the way of industrial users.  While you still need to watch for traffic, there are signs, trails and evidence of an increased awareness of the conservation values of the area. A Short-eared Owl has been seen hunting over the Cowichan River estuary, but my timing and the weather didn’t make a sighting likely.  It was still a great walk, with just a bit of drizzle.  Wet Eagles (a coastal form of Bald Eagle) were in abundance, and a male Belted Kingfisher put on a bit of a show for me.

Thanks to a tip from Derrick Marven, my next quest was to Bench Road (and a few other places) to try to locate a Sandhill Crane.  I didn’t find the crane, but I did find my first Tundra Swan of the year, breaking a nearly week-long stall on my bird count.
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I was feeling lucky when I turned onto Drinkwater Road, and knew I was in the right place when there was a vehicle stopped in the middle of the road with cameras and binoculars in evidence.  Local birders have been providing temptation for a mixed flock of sparrows, including an interesting pied Fox Sparrow and–wait for it—a White-throated Sparrow!

The next stop was the Nanaimo River estuary to search for the Harris’s Sparrow.  Steve Baillie’s detailed directions allowed me to find the most recent location, but to my surprise, by 4 pm, everything had gone into hiding.  It doesn’t get dark until about 5:30, but I guess the cloud cover had everyone fooled.  I found a few starlings and Song Sparrows, but passerines were in short supply.  It wasn’t gloomy enough, apparently, for Short-eared Owls to appear, but I was prepared to wait.  The rain had stopped, and I was sure it would only be a matter of time.  I perched on the observation tower and waited.  And scanned.  And waited. And scanned. Good optics will allow you to still see clearly in low light, and I had good optics.  So I waited.  And scanned, until I could no longer clearly see my car in the nearby parking lot.  I was just about to call it quits, when finally, I spotted one Short-eared Owl cruising along one of the channels.  I only saw it for about 15 seconds before I lost it to habitat and darkness, but I now had three new birds for the day.  Officially unstuck!

I’ve now made my way as far as Courtenay and backtracked a little to spend the night at the appropriately named Kingfisher Oceanside Resort and Spa.  Tomorrow I’ll see if I can relocate the Marbled Godwit and check out the birds in the Comox/Courtenay area (maybe even a Yellow-billed Loon) before heading over to Quadra Island for another stab at the Great Gray Owl.

I knew that there would be very little time for big year birding between Friday and Sunday this week.  Rocky Point Bird Observatory had the good fortune to have Bill Clark, renowned raptor specialist in town to lead a raptor workshop for us.

I did manage, however, to sneak a tiny bit of time to try a new place for the White-throated Sparrow.  Bow Park in Saanich has been a pretty reliable spot for this sparrow in recent years, sometimes with several individuals seen.  Mike and Jo Motek saw one there twice this week, and given my (lack of) luck at Panama Flats, I decided to give it a try between appointments.  The park has a pond with dozens of Wood Ducks and other “puddle ducks”,  but my attention was more in the woods on Friday.  There was a little of the same problem as I had at Panama; the park is well-used and several times the sparrows were flushed back into the bushes.  However, it was not nearly as frequent or frustrating as it had been on Thursday.

With only about 20 minutes, I didn’t really expect to get the bird, and that’s exactly what happened.  I’m really on a streak for not getting White-throated Sparrows!  It was a beautiful afternoon, though, and all of the other birds were actiing as if it was spring.  The woods was filled with song and courtship displays of Anna’s Hummingbirds and Bewick’s Wrens were going on all around me.

A Brown Creeper was also singing clearly as it made its way around and around a Garry Oak tree.

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Saturday and Sunday were completely tied up with the raptor workshop, I think Saturday may be the first day this year I have done no birding at all.

I still got to think about birds (or at least one particular bird) though. I’d received a text from Carla Duffey on Quadra Island on Thursday that the Great Gray Owl had been seen again.  On Saturday, she was staring at it in her yard as she texted me.  I need a body double!

On Sunday, I saw two species that were not on my list: Red-throated Loon and Short-eared Owl.    Only problem was that I was on the mainland for the raptor workshop field trip, so they don’t count.  I also got a text from Matt Cameron who had relocated a Northern Shrike in Victoria.  grrrrr.

So back I go.  Monday morning, I am heading back to Quadra Island to search again for this big but elusive ghost.  My species list has been stalled at 130 for several days now. I hope to change that in the morning. Wish me luck!

Sometimes when I’m out birding alone, songs pop into my head.  Some of them are almost like a theme of the moment.  You’ll see some of these lyrics show up from time to time as the titles of the blog posts.  I hope they entertain you as much as them rattling around my head entertains me!

Thursday was another short day birding–a trend that will continue through the weekend due to Rocky Point Bird Observatory’s Raptor Identification workshop.  White-throated Sparrow was once again the mission for about an hour, before heading to Swan Lake.  I returned to the scene at Panama Flats where one was recently seen.  There were plenty of sparrows and other birds around, so it looked good! Fox , Golden-crowned, and Song Sparrows were picking through the offerings left by passersby.  Spotted Towhees were calling from the bushes and making occasional forays out for the seed, but no White-crowned or White-throated Sparrows were there on my arrival.  Bewick’s Wrens and Anna’s Hummingbirds were singing.  It was a wonderful sunny day at the flats. However, approximately every three minutes, someone would come by–either on a bike, walking, or with their dogs or children in tow, sending the sparrows deep into the brush.   Panama Flats has been such a fantastic place for interesting sparrows, often quite visible due to the sprinkling of seed by birders and neighbours.  It’s great that the area is getting a lot of use, something Saanich will need to consider as they begin to implement a plan for the area.  However, After another fruitless search for the White-throated, I think we need to  gradually move the sparrow feeding site a little further off the beaten path.

With the light beginning to fade, I headed to Swan Lake for another elusive bird, the American Bittern.  By its very nature, this cryptic species is difficult to spot.  My best chance was to see it coming to roost, and Chris Saunders had recommended showing up around 4:30 to wait for it.  On arrival, I met Court Cameron on the boardwalk, also enjoying the lake in the late afternoon light. It was a calm day and the light was having an artistic effect on the water and vegetation.

In the falling light, the moon was clearly visible–and very photogenic.

Ducks were heading in for the night.

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Raccoons were just getting up.

And right at that very moment…….

I had to leave  (sigh!)

I have to say, though, that watching the changes on the lake as the sun set was so spectacularly beautiful, and I was happy to be there, even without the Bittern.