As far as I’m concerned, my big year has already been a big success in at least one regard.  I can’t remember the last time that I’ve deliberately been out birding in my own region for as many consecutive days.  Too often, I let other tasks take priority, and as a result, I often refer to myself as an “administrative birder”.  There are always more jobs to be done, websites to update, and emails to send (not to mention the usual household chores).  My big year has allowed me to make birding something of a priority and to get out into the field guilt-free.  Well, maybe not entirely guilt-free, but at least I’m getting out there.  In the last few days, I’ve probably spent more hours birding that I usually do in a month.  I’m liking it!

The quest for birds has also given me the opportunity to visit places I haven’t seen in a while.   Today, as the rain lightened to drizzle, with a promise of stopping, I headed to Sooke, one of the most reliable areas in the region for Greater White-fronted Geese.  For years, the John Phillips Memorial Golf Club had a significant wintering flock, so I confidently headed out to tick this species.   It was more than a little confusing when I arrived at the site and couldn’t find the golf course. Had it really been so long that I didn’t remember where it was?  I mean, I understand why I couldn’t find the Tundra Swans yesterday, but how could I misplace a golf course?  Well, it turns out that since the last time I was there, the golf course had been sold for development and no longer exists.  In its place are a lot of houses–and a small greenspace.  I set out to explore the flooded pond, picking up the usual species, but then I saw a new bird across the water.  Wilson’s Snipe!  On a closer look, I found not one or two, but at least sixteen hunkered down on the water’s edge.  This was the largest group of snipe I’ve ever seen in the Victoria area.  The park also looks good for rails, but none were to be seen today.  No geese either, but I have a good line on them for tomorrow!

More than one cycle of the medication before the cialis discount pharmacy result is apparent. Exercising moderately, doing yoga and aerobics can improve blood circulation, you can also opt for exercises that can help you improve blood tadalafil sale circulation thereby increasing your stamina and sexual health. Ed, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, to name a buy cialis cute-n-tiny.com few. So you should need to go for the branded leader or the cute-n-tiny.com cialis generic 10mg. As the rain slowed, I headed to Whiffin Spit Park, one of the birding hotspots in the region.  This little strip of land has a great history of rarities, and I was hoping to find one today.  As luck would have it, no rarities presented themselves to me, but I had a great time watching Black Turnstones, Harlequin Ducks, Thayer’s Gulls, Western Meadowlarks and a good assortment of sparrows.  My first Savannah Sparrow of the year put in an appearance, and while I was scoping seabirds, two Black Oystercatchers flew by, giving me three new species for the day. There was also an interesting Northwestern Crow.  At first I thought its feathers were soiled, which can happen if you are low crow in a roost, but a closer look showed that it had a significant number of gray marks on its feathers.  It’s fun to find a common bird with uncommon characteristics!

 

As the number of “regulars” dwindles, I hope to spend a lot more time thoroughly exploring birding hotspots and lesser known habitat around the area.  It’s great to get outside!

Have you ever left something someplace where you’d know where to find it, only to find it gone when you returned?  Well, that happened to me today.  I am absolutely positive that I left a couple of Tundra Swans at Royal Roads University a couple of weeks ago, but they were nowhere to be seen today!

A constant rain prompted me to focus on waterfowl today.  In the Pacific Northwest, if you let the rain stop you from going out, you’d spend an awful lot of time inside.  Someone should have told this to the ducks!  Even they were in short supply today.

Admittedly, I waited until afternoon in hopes of a break in the weather, but when none was forthcoming, I headed out into the soggy weather.  I made stops today at Viaduct Flats, Esquimalt Lagoon, Albert Head Lagoon and Royal Roads University, but only managed a single addition to my year list, an expected Mute Swan.  There is a large flock of these swans at Esquimalt Lagoon, along with a Trumpeter Swan that has been hanging out with them for several years.  For a few days in December, they were joined by a pair of Tundra Swans that moved between the garden ponds at the adjacent university and the lagoon, making it a three swan species stop.  Not so lucky today!

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My most interesting find today was another birder, Rob Gowan, also trying his luck in the rain.  I know why I was out there.  I wonder if he might have a goal of his own for 2015.  Rob, are you doing a big year?  🙂

Although I only added one species to the year list today, I was able to add several more to my Capital Region (county) and Victoria Checklist lists.  I expect that I will have close to half of the birds I will expect this year checked by the end of the month.  To keep things interesting, I am also going to keep “county” lists for each of the regional districts on Vancouver Island. Since I live in the Capital Regional District, I expect this list to be the longest, but I hope to give reasonable coverage to all of the areas.

At this point, I suppose it’s only fair to put my friends on notice that they should not expect me to be on time for anything for the 361 days.  I was driving home in the rain just as the sun had set when I realized that there were geese and gulls on a school field.  My birding habits have definitely changed!  I turned the car around and spent what light was left picking through the flocks.  Mostly Canada Geese and Mew Gulls, but sooner or later, I’m going to find something good!

After dipping on my first two owl chases of the year (Western Screech and Great Gray), I couldn’t have been happier when I received a message from Dave Fraser–the Owl Whisperer, as I call him–to go owling when I got back to Victoria.  The weather forecast for the next few days is decidedly damp, so we didn’t dally.  A status check shortly after 5 am started things rolling for the most diverse owling adventure of my birding experience.

There is a semi-secret place in Victoria known as the most reliable for Western Screech Owl.  BBO (Before Barred Owls), the Western Screech was the most commonly heard owl in this area.  Since the arrival of Barred Owls to Vancouver Island in 1969, their numbers have dropped precipitously.  When I started birding in the mid 1990’s, I found screech owls at three locations, but I hadn’t heard one here in at least ten years.  Although there are reports of the occasional call, you have to be pretty lucky to find one these days.  Dave, Jim Danzenbaker and I returned to the spot I’d started my big year and listened.  Nothing. We waited about five minutes.  Still nothing.  Timing is everything, though, and Dave has found this male to be more responsive in the morning than in the evening.  Dave whistled.  Within about a minute, there was a distant response.  Within three, the bird was probably within about 80m of us.  Success!

With a bit of time left before sunrise, we headed back towards Dave’s home, just a few miles away.  We stopped at the entrance to a golf course, where Dave had detected a Northern Saw-whet Owl  two weeks ago on the Victoria Christmas Bird Count.  We were barely out of the car when one flew right across the street in front of us!  Boom!

We continued to Dave’s home where his wife Leah Ramsay and I were exchanging tweets on the progress of our owl run, and where the hot tub has produced one of the best yard lists in Victoria.  (Dave highly recommends installing a hot tub to increase your yard list.)  It would be possible, on a good day, to pick up three more owls here.  It was a VERY good day!  Within  minutes of a few more toots and calls from Dave, we had added Barred, Great Horned, and Northern Pygmy Owl to our day list, and it wasn’t even sunrise!  On that happy note, Jim headed for the ferry to take him back to southern Washington. I am grateful for both Jim and Dave’s help in getting this big year off to a great big start.

But wait, there’s more!

Rumors of Horned Larks on Saanichton Spit sent me out birding as soon as I refueled with a cup of Tim Horton’s tea and the sun peeked through the clouds.  A drive through the Martindale Valley with visions of another possible owl (Barn or Short-eared) failed to produce, but a few more species were added to both the day and year list.  At Saanichton Spit, more new birds, but no Horned Larks.  But a very promising owl pellet has encouraged me to do some night birding there very soon.

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At lunchtime, I met up with Rick Schortinghuis and Liam Singh to hike to the top of Jocelyn Hill in search of Pine Grosbeaks and Townsend’s Solitaires, both species seen before Christmas.  There was fog and drizzle and a lot more “up” than I remembered.   I’ll definitely  need more of this kind of walk to prepare me for a White-tailed Ptarmigan quest in August! American Robins were the bird of the walk, with hundreds feeding on the Arbutus (Madrone) berries along the path.  It took us about two hours to reach the summit, picking up two new species (Cedar Waxwing and Hermit Thrush ) along the way.

While we were at the summit, we heard the spontaneous call of a Northern Pygmy Owl, my second of the day!  I also took my first selfie.   I don’t expect to make a habit of this as I’d much rather show you pictures of the birds, but let’s just say conditions weren’t great for that today.

A very full day of birding added fifteen new species to my big year list, and after a correction of a species seen but not entered from Quadra Island,  my total at the end of Day 3 stands at 101.  Not a bad start for the year.

Sunday and Monday are forecast to be wet and possibly windy.  I’ll spend time on both days to pick up other regular species around the Victoria area, and keep my fingers crossed for something unusual to show up as well.

Features on this site will evolve as the year goes on.  One new one is a map with the areas I’ve been birding coloured in.  I’ve got more than a third of my target, but have barely scratched the surface (area) of this island!

They say you should go big or go home.  I didn’t go home last night after the Duncan Christmas Bird Count, but headed instead to Campbell River in hopes of seeing a Great Gray Owl on Quadra Island today.  This would be a fantastic bird to get for many reasons: LIFER!!, probably the only one that will be chaseable this year, and just an all-round very cool bird.

Despite a lovely but cold evening last night, Jim Danzenbaker and I had noticed that the clouds were coming in while we travelled north on the highway.  This morning we awoke to a light drizzle and a bit of snow on the car and on the roads.  Catching a pre-dawn ferry, we were set for a morning of exploration on Quadra Island, a place neither of us have visited before.  We knew we’d add to the year list and had our fingers crossed for that particular bird.

The Great Gray Owl, unfortunately, had not been reported since just before Christmas, so we knew it was a longshot.  A couple of island residents had been keeping an eye out for it, so we had a good idea of where it wasn’t–just no concept of where it might be.  A drive around the island showed lots of great owl habitat, and there was probably a lot more that we didn’t see, reaching far into private properties.  We scoured the south end of the island, then along the east side to Rebecca Spit, a beautiful Provincial Park.

The east and west sides of the spit are only about 100 m apart, but have very different characters.  The windblown east side is covered in driftwood and provides a vantage point to see species like Pacific Loon, Surf Scoters, Horned Grebes, and Common Murres.  The west side is a sheltered bay that had many of the same species, but also birds seeking a bit of shelter from the wind, including Common Mergansers, White-winged Scoters and a Belted Kingfisher.

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We spent a bit of time near the Cape Mudge lighthouse and ended the morning with 38 species from Quadra Island.  Although the Great Gray wasn’t among them, it wasn’t really a miss.  To the best of our knowledge, no one has seen this owl in 2015.  If it turns up again, you can bet that I’ll be heading back!

Most of the afternoon was spent counting Bald Eagles and Common Ravens as we made our way south on Hwy 19.  Although there were a lot fewer along the highway than I have seen in the past, the eagles kept ahead of the ravens all the way to Nanaimo.  Just south of city, we headed to the Nanaimo River Estuary Conservation area in hopes of seeing a Rough-legged Hawk that has been there for a while.  This bird knows how to put on a show! We were barely out of the car when we could see the hawk perched on a snag a short distance away. As we walked along the path to the viewing platform, the hawk made a hunting strike on something on the ground and then flew to a fence line a little farther into the estuary.  For the next 30 minutes, it flew back and forth, stopping on a variety of perches, ensuring that we had as good a look as we could have possibly wanted.  Maybe the Great Gray Owl could pick up a pointer or two here!

Tomorrow morning, weather permitting, Dave Fraser is going to help us on our second attempt to find Western Screech Owl, after which Jim will return home to Washington State.  It’s been great having him start the year with me.

Just as expected, January 1  arrived on schedule.  And just as expected, I was not!  Many things I thought I’d have done by the end of 2014 are still on the to-do list.  But big years wait for no one, and by 12:15 am,  I was parked on the side of the road in a quiet location yearning to hear the ping-pong ball call of a Western Screech Owl.  With the alarm clock set for 5:30 am, this was a longshot–if I didn’t hear it within minutes, it would have to wait for another night.  It will have to wait for another night.  A few other stops on the way home yielded similar results.  All I can say is that I’m glad this is a big year, not just a big day!

The reason for the early wake-up call was an annual tradition that could not be ignored.  No, not the polar bear swim that Andy McKinnon hosts each year.  A MUCH more sane event–the Duncan Christmas Bird Count.  This year, the Mt. Prevost/Drinkwater team was stacked.  Not only were leader Alan McLeod and team regulars Jan Brown, Bruce Whittington, and Wanda  Dombrowski on hand, but Andrew Harcombe, Jim Danzenbaker and Syd Cannings had joined as well.  In tow, was videographer Ian Toews, gathering potential blackmail material as well as footage of birds and habitat for an upcoming production on birders.

It was cold before the sun woke up, but eventually turned into a very nice day.  We split into two groups, which then split into even more, allowing probably the best coverage our zone has ever received.   The end result of this group effort was a record of 60 species for our portion of the Duncan circle.   If you check out my species list, you’ll see that I have fewer than that for my first day of my big year.  While my group found 47 species in our section, there were several that were only seen by others, and several more that were seen by the other group. However, for my big day, those zone boundaries meant nothing, and I was able to add several species for my personal count, poached from other zones while there was still a bit of light.  I have 55 species checked at the end of day 1.

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I am very grateful for all of the encouragement and enthusiasm I’ve received for my quest.  Thank all of you for your positive thoughts and wishes, and I look forward to birding with as many of you as I can this year.

By the way, I will be adding links to the bottom of this page for others who are doing their own big years.  Check out Noah Strycker’s blog!  He’s not going for 275, or even 500 species. He’s chasing 5000, worldwide!