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.