Last things first.  Shortly after I arrived back in Victoria this evening, I got a text from Jeremy Gatten asking if we were safe.  “We” included several members of the island’s  birding community who had gone to Tofino for the weekend to take a late-season pelagic trip.  The weather has been awesome lately, and finally, one of the small-boat trips to the continental shelf was a “go”.  The reason for Jeremy’s concern was breaking news of a whale watching boat from Tofino sinking with confirmation of lives lost.

The boat in the incident was the Leviathan, the very boat that helped me get the Tufted Puffin in July for my big year. It’s shocking to hear of the loss and realizing just how easily something like this could happen. My thoughts are with the families, passengers and crew of today’s trip.

Going back to last weekend, I had two more opportunities to track down the Brown Booby and other pelagic species.  A group of birders from Vancouver:  birdergirl Melissa Hafting, BC Big Year birder Peter Candido, Vancouver Big Year birder Ilya Povalyaev, Carlo Giovanella, and Michael Klotz were joined by Vancouver Island birders Guy Monty, Kim Beardmore and me to seek out that elusive booby.  Two fishing charter boats were hired and the search was on.  We scoured the Juan de Fuca Strait from Sooke Harbour to Otter Point, back and forth across the water, picking up great looks at Northern Fulmars and Pink-footed Shearwaters among other birds but with no luck on the booby. Back on shore at the end of the trip, we went to Whiffin Spit to have another look at the Black-throated Sparrow and its new friend, Lapland Longspur.

 

After a late lunch, we headed to Esquimalt Lagoon in hopes of seeing the Rock Wren and resighting the Tropical Kingbird.  While the Vancouver folks  and Guy headed to Fort Rodd Hill  for the wren, I ran into more Victoria birders at the lagoon. As I left, Daniel and Leo Donnecke were still scoping the ocean, turning up what Daniel thought might be a Clark’s Grebe!

Sunday morning was the second of two Victoria Natural History Society “mini-pelagics” aboard the Fantasea II.  We convinced the captain to take a different route to Race Rocks this time around, heading straight to the US border in hopes that the Dungeness booby might venture our way for a feeding session.  We built up a great gull following, luring Pink-footed Shearwaters close to the boat. Red-necked Phalaropes and Humpback Whales were highlights.  Although the fog was heavy near Race Rocks, it lifted just enough for people to see, as well as smell, the sea lions and seals in the ecological reserve.

 

During the trip, Jeremy Gatten texted that he had relocated Daniel’s Clark’s Grebe so we convinced Godfrey to take the boat in as close as possible as we passed the lagoon.  We found the grebes, but the distance prevented us from getting  close enough for ID with binoculars.  There was also a credible report of a Red-throated Pipit at Martindale Flats.  Great!  Two needed birds on opposite sides of town and only a few hours of light available to search.

When we landed, several of us headed to Martindale Flats to try to find the pipit. Talk about your needle in a haystack!  When Neil Hughes reported the bird, it was in a flock of 400 plus.  We could barely find a dozen in the area. It wasn’t long before we abandoned our search in favour of the Clark’s Grebe.

Fortunately, we were luckier at Esquimalt Lagoon.  The bird was still too far out for decent photos, but we could see the distinctive field marks in our scopes.  #259 on the books!

Later that evening, when we all got a chance to review our photos, it turned out that several of us had indeed captured the grebe from the deck of the Fantasea!

Rarities were coming fast and furious when a photo of a Red-naped Sapsucker were submitted to eBird on Sunday night; Monday morning, I was camped on the doorstep of the home where the photo was taken.  Ted and Marilyn Down were very gracious bird hosts.  I waited, sometimes in pouring rain, but no sapsucker. I wandered the neighbourhood for an hour without any better luck. I went back and waited again.  Still nothing.  Maybe it was gone. I went home for lunch and moved on.

In the afternoon, I went back to look for the pipit and ran into Mike McGrenere and Daniel Donnecke, also seeking the bird. Again, the number of pipits was low, and considerable looking still failed to turn up any other than the standard American Pipits. An adult Northern Shrike put in an appearance, but there was little else to keep our attention.  An alert about three Western Bluebird at the top of Little Saanich Mountain drew Mike and Daniel away, while I continued to look for the pipit.   Eventually, just as I was giving up, I got a call from Mike.  They had located the birds!  I wasn’t sure I could get there in time, as the gate closes at 6 pm, but I squeaked in, made it up the hill and saw the birds for about one minute in fading sunlight.

 

You might be thinking, “Don’t you already have Western Bluebirds?”  Why yes, I do!  But they are among my “dirty” birds–ones that some individuals might object to me counting since they were reintroduced to Vancouver Island.  The Observatory Hill birds had no bands, so are not part of the reintroduction.

When it rains, it pours, and a report of a juvenile King Eider in Parksville was posted.  I was speaking to a class at Camosun College at 1:30 on Tuesday.  Could I get to Parksville, look for the bird, and make it back to town by 1?  Well, I could–if I headed up before daybreak.  I met Guy Monty in Parksville at 8 am. Christopher Stephens joined us in the search, but we didn’t locate the eider. i had to leave around 10:30; Guy continued on until 1 pm without luck.

Meanwhile, back in Victoria…

My presentation to the Camosun students went well. I think this is about the fifth year that Annette Dehalt has invited me to her class.  I was just leaving the classroom when my phone rang.  Daniel had seen the Red-Naped Sapsucker! The location was less than 10 minutes from my place.  Unfortunately, I was more than 30 minutes from there. I made it there in good time, but of course, the bird wasn’t there.  However, patience paid off, and I managed to briefly see it twice over the next two hours. 260!

 

Wednesday, Jeremy Gatten and I made a road trip to Duncan, ust to see what we could see.  Truth be told, we were hoping to spot a Redhead on Quamichan Lake, but we’re still a bit early,  Visiting Cowichan Bay, we found two Heermann’s Gulls.  It wasn’t until later when we heard from Derrick Marven, that we realized that this species is exceedingly rare in the Cowichan Valley. We also saw a good number of Ring-billed Gulls, both at Cowichan Bay and Quamichan Lake.

 

We didn’t find a Redhead on Quamichan Lake, but we did find a Barrow’s Goldeneye, Trumpeter Swan and  a Bufflehead.  We hit a few other points of interest around Duncan, including Drinkwater Rd, where an abundance of apples had been left by the side of the road.

 

A stop by the sewage ponds was a must.

A Canvasback, 25 Bonaparte’s Gulls, and a Peregrine Falcon were among the highlights at the sewage treatment centre. We ended the road trip with 85 species. Not too shabby for a short day.

Oh yeah.  I almost forgot.  I had another first on Wednesday.  After 9 1/2 months of almost daily birding, I had my first bird-poop incident.  My car has been hit several times, but I’ve managed to avoid anointment–until last Wednesday.
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With nothing specific to chase on  Thursday, I finally had the chance to check out a raft of Surf Scoters off Glencoe Cove Park in Gordon Head.  The neighbourhood has sure changed a lot since I lived nearby in the 90s.

I estimated 700 Surf Scoters, along with a small number of White-winged Scoters.  The light was perfect.  I couldn’t turn any of them into eiders.

The surprise bird for me was a late Osprey overhead.  Normally these leave by the end of September, but there are occasional holdovers.

I was just about to head back to Martindale for another try at the pipit when Paul Deneuverville called, asking if I still needed a Harris’s Sparrow.  If you’ve been following this blog, you know that I made at least a half dozen trips looking for a Harris’s at the Nanaimo Estuary last fall without luck. I wasn’t going to let the bird that Paul found in Jordan River slip away, even though it meant I had to brave the Westshore’s rush hour traffic again.

En route,  I called Cathy Carlson.  She lives near Jordan River and headed out with an offering of seed in hand. When I arrived almost two hours after getting Paul’s call, there she was, in the parking lot, pointing at the Harris’s Sparrow!

The parking lot was full to overflowing with cars, people and dogs. I counted 75 surfers at one point. Yet this uncommon bird was busy going about its business.

 

Friday was a travel day.  The Donnecke family, Mike and Barb McGrenere, Mark Yunker, Guy Monty, Reid Hildebrand and I were all descending on Tofino for a weekend pelagic.  Finally, on the fourth try, things were looking good for getting out.  Several of us met at Amphitrite Point, where birds were scarce, and the swell was still larger than expected. While the Donneckes visited with family in Ucluelet, the rest of us met up for dinner at Jamie’s Rainforest Inn.  I order the seafood chowder.  It was excellent!

In the morning we headed to the Whale Centre, suited up and got into a tiny Boston Whaler. Our destination was the continental shelf, and although we started out in pretty calm waters, the farther we went, the bumpier things got.  The skipper warned us ahead of time that anyone sitting at the back of the boat would probably get wet, so it was just as well that we didn’t fill the boat.

Cassin’s Auklets were numerous, and soon Sooty and Pink-footed Shearwaters were putting on a show. A mostly white bird got the attention of those sitting up front, but despite chasing it, we couldn’t refind it for an identification.  By now some of the waves were breaking and spraying me with a lot of water.  I was glad for the survival suit.  A few Buller’s Shearwaters flew close to the boat. I was happy about  this, because although I had the species for my year already, it was checked with a crappy look. This time I really “saw” the birds.

Just about the time we saw our first Black-footed Albatrosses of the trip, the skipper said it was time to go. The signs in the clouds and the stiffening wind all pointed to a significant weather change.  Although we might have been fine staying out a little longer, we had a two-hour trek back to shore, and with worsening conditions, that could have been a problem.  Reluctantly, we said goodbye to our chances of spotting the birds we were hoping for and headed home.

While I had gotten wet on the trip out, it was nothing compared to what happened to Guy and the others up front on the way back.  The wind pushed many waves right over the side of the boat and into them.  They were cold and wet by the time we reached calmer waters off Vargas and Cleland Islands where we looked for Sea Otters, Gray Whales and shorebirds.  It was safe to take the cameras out again.

On our return, Guy, and Mark headed home, Reid headed to Victoria,  and the rest of us met up for dinner at Jamie’s Restaurant.  The food was excellent again. It turns out the chef is a winner of the reality program Chopped Canada.

At dawn, the mud flats behind Jamie’s provided a spectacular sunrise.

 

The birds were all usual suspects, but the views were spectacular. The Donneckes were going surfing, the McGreneres were headed to the airport and Wickaninnish Beach, and I was soon also on my way.

I stopped briefly by the airport and found several Wilson’s Snipe and a couple of tree frogs. No Red-throated Pipits or other rarities.

 

 

I was all the way to Nanaimo when I realized I’d left some stuff at the hotel. Thank goodness the Donneckes were still in Tofino and Susan had her new cell phone!  They were able to pick up my stuff and save me an extra five hours of driving.

I made it back to Central Saanich just in time to catch the last minutes of RPBO’s end of the season party when I got the text from Jeremy.  Tonight, my thoughts are very much with the folks in Tofino and all those associated with Jamie’s enterprises there. At the time I finished this blog post, five people are confirmed dead, two are in critical condition and one is still missing. A large boat in relatively calm waters gone in a flash in waters where we had passed just a bit more than 24 hours earlier.  Pretty sobering turn of events and a reminder of just how quickly good times can turn bad.  My condolences to all involved.

 

 

 

 

 

Hurricane Oho brushed against Vancouver Island last weekend, bringing hopes of southern and offshore birds.  Although the winds weren’t too strong in the Victoria area, they were pretty intense on the exposed coast, so a trip to Port Renfrew was the order of the day on Sunday.

I stopped briefly at Whiffin Spit to do a wellness check on the Black-throated Sparrow (still there, but not looking too hot), and at several other viewpoints along the way west.

 

It seemed that birders aren’t the only people interested in the coast after a big storm. Although I have made many trips out to Jordan River and Port Renfrew this year, the beaches have never been as crowded as they were last weekend. Some places, I think there were more people than birds!

The aftermath of the storm wasn’t as significant as either the surfers or I expected.  Despite scanning carefully through hundreds of gulls, I couldn’t turn up anything unusual, and the surfers tried desperately to find a wave.  Port Renfrew had better surf, but fewer surfers.  Interestingly, a large flock of Black Turnstones (with a few Surfbirds and a couple of Dunlin) were pretending to be Sanderling, running along the sandy beach on the south side of Harris Cove.

It was fun to watch them try to outrun the waves as they came up the beach.  Even the local marinas had prepared for the incoming storm season by pulling many of their docks out of the water.

 

I was a little surprised to not see birds pecking away at the now-stranded marine life on the floats.

With not much happening in town ,  I headed up to Botany Bay to attempt a seawatch.  The Steller’s Jays were predictably in the parking lot.  No surprises to be found!

 

Down in the bay, the surf was high and entertaining, but still not much in the way of birds–not even any shearwaters.

 

I headed back to town and another look from the Port Renfrew pier. I stop there a couple of times each trip to use the pub’s wifi to get messages, and this time there was a doozy!  Cathy Carlson had photographed a Brown Booby not far from Sooke.  I only had about an hour to bird on my way back in that direction as I was scheduled to be bander-in-charge at Pedder Bay for our owl project at dusk.

An hour’s not a lot of time to look for a booby, so I focussed on the marinas, stopping at as many of them as I could on my way back towards Victoria.  But there was something nagging me. When driving back down the hill from Botany Bay, I had seen an odd shape out of the corner of my eye, through the trees, soaring over the entrance to Harris Cove.  I hadn’t been able to relocate it.  Could that have been a booby?  I’d been a little focussed on pelicans and wondered if I might have missed something even better.

The marina search was fruitless, but I did make it to the banding station on time.  We banded 27 Northern Saw-whet Owls before shutting down at about 2 am.  Now I had a dilemma.  Go home to my own bed (almost an hour away) and go looking for the booby on Monday, or heading back to Port Renfrew (more than 2 hours away) to get an early start on a re-do.  I opted for the latter, knowing that I would have to stop en route to sleep.

My car is pretty comfortable to sleep in and I found a quiet and dark spot on Sheringham Point Road at about 3 am.  I’ve been keeping a pillow and blanket in the car (along with a few clothes), so grabbed them and settled in.  I expected it to get quite cold.  I fell asleep quickly, but was awakened only a few minutes later by someone pounding on my window. One of the street’s residents must have  seen me pull up and wanted to know what I was doing there. I would have thought that was pretty obvious, and I’m not sure what his issue was, because when I said I’d pulled over to avoid driving while too tired, he was fine with that.  Apparently, there had been a fatal “falling asleep” accident just down the road a few days earlier.

My visitor left, and I went back to sleep.  Until I heard an animal on the roof of my car.  In the dark, everything sounds bigger than it is, so although the noise seemed like it was being made by something the size of a cougar, I suspected it was a housecat or a raccoon.  Sure enough, after a few minutes a cat slid down my windshield.  The rest of the night was quiet and uneventful, and I was back on the road before 7.  Then it started to rain…

I was very grateful for an open coffee shop in Port Renfrew, even though it was early and a statutory holiday in Canada. The second Monday of October is our Thanksgiving.  I wasn’t looking for a turkey, though.  I wanted a Brown Booby!

With the rain, sometimes an absolute downpour, birds were even more scarce than the day before, and my trip to several places in Renfrew and on the way back to Victoria didn’t turn up anything more exciting than a very wet grouse on the side of the road.

By the time I reached Sooke and telephone reception, word was out that a juvenile Brown Booby had been sighted at Dungeness Bay in Washington.  Was it the same bird that Cathy had seen?  Or had Oho blown in a whole flock of boobies? I continued my search, albeit with a little less enthusiasm.  When I reached Colwood and the first chance for a Tim Hortons tea, my phone rang.  It was Jeremy Gatten, out in East Sooke, and he’d just watched a distant Brown Booby for about an hour and a half.  There were two birds! I headed back west and spent the last two hours of daylight waiting for fog to lift and hoping that the bird would drift back my way.  It didn’t. I put my Thanksgiving turkey in the oven after 9 pm.

Wednesday morning, Cathy and Ted Carlson were gracious enough to take Jeremy, Daniel Donncke and me out in their boat on a marine search for the missing booby.  It was a gorgeous day and I can’t think of a better way to spend five hours.  We found several Northern Fulmars and a few Red-necked Phalaropes, but generally speaking, it was a desert out there. Not many birds at all.
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We raised binoculars and joked about finding a Tropical Kingbird at Whiffin Spit as we passed. We saw a good number of raptors getting ready for their migration south.  A kettle of about a dozen Red-tailed Hawks, along with an assortment of other raptors, was a pretty interesting sight for the Sooke Basin! I dropped Jeremy and Daniel off and was running an errand when my phone pinged.  Heather Tronsden had found a Tropical Kingbird at Whiffin Spit, just about the time that we were going by!  It was too late to go back before sunset, but I knew where I’d be in the morning.

Mary Robichaud, Mike Ashbee, and Tim Zurowski were already at the tip of the spit when I arrived, and had been there since sunrise. No sign of the kingbird.  We all looked around for a while then started to drift away, Sea lions were hanging out fishing at the entrance to the harbour.  Their barking and snorting created quite the show. Humans were still able to catch a fish or two, even with about half a dozen of these competitors nearby.

 

It was around 11 when I finally threw in the towel.  I did manage to get a nice shot of a young Cooper’s Hawk overhead.

 

I headed to Tower Point where Daniel was doing a waterbird survey, in the hopes that two sets of eyes might have a better chance of seeing the booby.  It may have been better, but it still didn’t turn up the bird.

I was giving a slide show to the Cowichan Valley Garden Club that evening, so figured I’d get to Duncan early to avoid traffic issues on the Malahat.  Not to mention that my slide show wasn’t quite ready for presentation! Everything worked out, though, and the slide show went off without a hitch.

Thursday was another day on the water to do more booby searching.  Ben van Drimmelen once again offered up his sailboat for the birding cause, and Jeremy and Mike got their first sailing experience.  We were less than a half kilometre away from the dock when my phone rang. It was Mary relaying a message that John Woods had found a Tropical Kingbird at Esquimalt Lagoon!

It was a great day for sailing, but a lousy day for birding.  The conditions were perfect, but we couldn’t find a feeding flock or drifting logs anywhere.  We went from Oak Bay to Clover Point and beyond, crossing over the shipping lanes to check both near and offshore waters.  Nothing!  Eventually, we did see a good flock of Bonaparte’s Gulls, but that was about it.  There were a few other gulls, and the occasional alcid, but it was hard to believe that these waters were filled with thousands of birds just a couple of weeks ago.

When we landed, I braved the rush hour traffic to try to get to Esquimalt Lagoon before dark.  The trip took pretty much twice as long as I thought it would, and I was starting to feel that it was a useless cause.  I would only have about 15 minutes of dusky light when I got there, and I had a meeting to attend in the opposite direction shortly after sunset.  When I arrived, I scanned the treetops.  Nothing.  I scanned the shrubs.  Only a kingfisher. Treetops again.  Still nothing.  Shrubs again. In the same shrub as the kingfisher now sat a kingbird.  And then it was off up into a taller tree.  I got some VERY bad record shots, but evidence that I’d seen my 258th bird for the year.  I went back on Friday and got a few better pictures.

 

Also on Friday, I joined a group of students from Pearson College of the Pacific on a trip to Race Rocks.

This is an ecological reserve, and permission has to be granted for a landing.  I was very fortunate to be invited along.  A search of the islands did not turn up the elusive booby, but it was an interesting visit none the less.   Like most lighthouse locations, Race Rocks turns up more than its fair share of rarities.  Sadly, none today.  I did get good looks of Savannah Sparrows cavorting with Elephant Seals, though, and that doesn’t happen every day!

Among the many hundreds of sea lions, two showed evidence of entanglement in fishing gear.  Professionals are coming to the reserve later this month to attempt to free them.

Saturday and Sunday, I will be back out on the water.  Keep your fingers crossed for a booby or something else spectacular!

 

 

 

 

Wow, the days are just zipping by!  Although the calendar still says there are two and a half months left in the year, in reality, most of migration is done.  Thete is only one week left of songbird monitoring at Rocky Point and Pedder Bay, and we’ll finish the owl project for another year in just three weeks. With the bulk of migrants gone, my searches will really be for the rarities.

After the brilliant few days last week where I managed to add three new birds in two days, I was prepared for a bit of a lull.  Friday morning’s hunt for the Sage Sparrow failed to turn up any likely suspects.  In the afternoon, Swan Lake had a “grand opening” for their new section of the lake trail boardwalk. Fall is definitely in the air and a lot of our “winter” birds are starting to arrive in good numbers.

Swan Lake has been surprisingly quiet this year.  Some goodies have shown up, for sure, but it is typically one of the true hot spots in Victoria.  Chris Saunders is keeping up his end of the lake, but the sections normally scrutinized by Ian Cruickshank haven’t had their usual coverage since he’s been away.

Saturday, I planned to go west to see what might be hanging out between Sheringham Point and Port Renfrew. I made a stop at Whiffin Spit for another look at the Black-throated Sparrow, a contender for the most cooperative rarity of the year.  While there, word came that a small white egret had been chased from the field at Lansdown Middle School by a dog.  I headed back to town to search for a probably Cattle Egret.  I spent some time in the Blenkinsop Valley, checking out the pipits on the turf farm, trying to conjure up a Red-throated, and scanning the valley for the egret. From the viewpoint on Mount Doug, I saw a promising “speck” in a field a long way away, but couldn’t get to the private property to check it out.

After a few hours of searching, I had to head out to Pedder Bay for an RPBO function.  One of the challenges on being at either of the Rocky Point banding sites is that there is poor or no cell service.  When you are doing a big year, communication is your lifeline.

On my way home, (yes, at Tim’s), I found I had a voicemail.  Tom Michell had photographed a Cattle Egret in his back yard in the Martindale Valley! A dilemma: Could I phone a farmer at 10:30 pm?  I decided not.  Birder friends come to expect phone calls at odd hours–like dawn–but I didn’t want to disenfranchise someone who had called me about such a good bird.  I sent a text and made plans for the morning.

At sunrise on Sunday, Mary Robichaud and I were checking out the fields and barns, and thanks to Tom’s tip, located the bird (#257) near the corner of Puckle and Island View Roads. The alarm was sounded and several other birders got to see this rarity before the morning was out.

Then it was off for another boat trip from Oak Bay, thanks to Ben  van Drimmelin.

Although it wasn’t nearly as birdy as the trip that Daniel Donnecke and I took with Ben little more than a week earlier, we still managed to find a few birds–but nothing new for my year list. While the gulls were still plentiful, there were very few murres and we didn’t see a single jaeger. What a difference a few days can make.

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Yesterday, the trailing winds of Hurricane Oho passed by the island.  While the Juan de Fuca strait remained calm during the morning, the west coast was battered during the day.  Commitments keep me from heading to Tofino, but I am hitting the road for  Port Renfrew in a few minutes.  Wonder what I might find out there today?

 

 

When last I left you, I was staying with friends Kristina Kezes, Shea Wyatt, and their baby, Maya.  This, in itself was quite amazing, as they had just moved into their new home last weekend, and I am grateful for their hospitality.  Turns out that this would be a week of good deeds from a lot of people.

My plan for Wednesday morning was to do a bit of birding in the Fort Rupert/Port Hardy area.  In fact, I knew the trip to Balaklava Island wasn’t a sure thing, and I had decided that getting to spend a few days birding the north end of the island could be a pretty good way to spend some time, anyway.  Ivan wasn’t going to be able to come to get me until the tide reached a certain level, so I had at least until about 1 pm to look around.  Just as I got into my car, though, I got a call from Kim Beardmore asking if I would like to see a Black-throated Sparrow.  Well, obviously the answer was yes, but unless he was having it shipped to me, i figured it was probably at the other end of the island.  It was.  Kim and his brother Roger had found the bird at Whiffin Spit on Monday afternoon.  I helped Kim get the word out by calling and texting a few people, then went on my way fussing a little over missing this fantastic bird.

A text from Ivan indicated that the fog was lifting his way, although it was still pretty socked in at Fort Rupert. This was a good thing.  Although I was missing the sparrow in Sooke, things were looking promising for the oriole.  Ivan had seen it around 9 am, so it was likely still on the island.

At Storeys Beach, gulls and eagles were scrapping over fish scraps that had been left by a benefactor.

There were some Black-bellied Plovers and many ducks hanging in the fog.  I was just getting ready to go to the other end of Storeys Beach when a call came in from Ivan.  Not only was the fog rolling back in, he couldn’t get the winch in the boathouse to work, and that meant he couldn’t launch the boat.

If you’ve ever seen the movie “Rare Birds“, you’ll be familiar with the line, “Always have a Plan B, Dave, always have a Plan B.”  I’m not Dave, but Ivan and I had previously discussed other ways to the island.  I called the Cape Scott Water Taxi, but there was no answer.  Ivan texted George’s cell phone number and when I called, he answered right away.  If I could be at the dock in 15 minutes, I could get a lift on a trip that was about to leave.  I honestly didn’t even know where I was going, but I was sure going to get there!  I couldn’t bear the thought of missing the sparrow in Sooke AND the oriole on Balaklava.

Ivan got his aluminum skiff going and met us out in the channel.  We made a boat to boat transfer in the amazingly calm waters, and I was officially on the lookout for the Orchard Oriole.

I had inquired about the possibility of a return trip on the taxi on Thursday, but that wasn’t going to work.  George was taking a group out to the Cape Scott trail  and wasn’t coming back until Friday. That wouldn’t be ideal, but was a fallback plan.

Ivan gave me a tour of the lighthouse property.  For a fairly compact bit of land, it gets more than its fair share of interesting birds.  Ivan’s had Tropical Kingbird, Lapland Longspur, Eastern Kingbird and now Orchard Oriole in less than a year.  We hadn’t been looking long when the oriole popped into the bushes in front of us.  Ivan got some great shots and I got what I needed–a decent look and a couple of evidence shots.

The point is amazing.  I realized I was probably there on one of the last really nice days of the fall.  I could only imagine the seawatching that could take place from here, looking out to Pine Island and beyond.  Just casually watching turned up a Black-legged Kittiwake resting on a log. Hundreds of Pacific Loons, still in breeding plumage, passed through the channel.

After a spagetti supper, we set about finding me a way home. Ivan contacted the folks at the God’s Pocket Resort nearby, and they did have  a trip back to Port Hardy planned.  Only thing was that it was at 8 am, and they were 20 minutes away by skiff–if the fog wasn’t too thick and the winds light. We had a plan.  A plan that could have easily gone awry if Ivan hadn’t remembered that tides would come into play.  He needed 9 feet of tide to get the skiff out, and that would happen just around 7 am.  He offered to get up early and move the boat to the rocks in front of the lighthouse, but it would mean a scramble over some slippery, almost vertical shale to get into the boat. As the fog rolled in and the wind picked up, Ivan made his last weather report of the night and I settled in on the couch for some sleep.

By dawn, the fog had departed and things looked good.  Ivan went to move the boat and I went to look for birds.  I found some, but I also found a sea otter having an urchin breakfast!

The worst part about such an early departure was that I wasn’t going to get a better picture of the oriole, nor the chance to look for some of the other seabirds I had hoped to see.  The good part was that I just might be able to make it back to Victoria before dark (a day earlier than planned), and maybe, just maybe, I could see the Black-throated Sparrow.  Mary Robichaud and Donna Ross had relocated it on Wednesday evening and there was a chance it could still be there.
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God’s Pocket offers diving vacations, and the boat was packed with folks heading home from an excellent trip. I’d packed my camera for easy stowage, but was feeling a little unprepared without it. I really wasn’t expecting to see anything new, but another kittiwake flew by very close to the boat.  A picture would have been nice. Then, about halfway to Port Hardy, I noticed a very small brown bird on the water.  When I put my bins up, I saw the light rump patch, then it flew.  Leach’s Storm-petrel!!! One of my target birds, and much closer to shore than I expected.  The only camera within reach was my cell phone, and I managed to get a very short, very bouncy video.  Here’s a frame capture of this fast flyer:

 

Back on land, I was still a few kilometres away from where I’d left my car, but one of God’s Pocket’s crew, Tim, gave me a ride.  The crew had also given me a code name: Rare Bird!

I got into my car and hurried to Kristina’s, stopping just long enough to drop off a key and pick up the rest of my gear to head back to Sooke, a mere 473 kilometres away.  I only stopped twice for tea and communications, and managed to make it to Sooke by about 4:45.  There was a crowd of birders all looking in the same direction, a very good sign.  Sure enough, the sparrow was still putting on a show. Despite the odds, I was able to add another good bird–my third in two days–to my big year list.  Black-throated Sparrow (#256).

 

It was also a bit of  reunion.  Guy Monty, who I’ve seen more in a week than I usually do in a year, had been marshalling the bird and the crowds most of the day.  Kim Beardmore, who discovered the bird, came out to make sure that I found it. And Guy and I were not the only ones who travelled to see the bird, Melissa Hafting juggled her work shifts and came from Vancouver with her mom, braving the Colwood Crawl to get this sighting.

There were as many cameras as binoculars, and I think this bird might be the most photographed in the last little while.

 

As I left the spit and headed to the gas station (travelling on fumes), my phone rang. It was Barbara Begg with news of a possible Sage Sparrow seen by David Stirling, thankfully pretty close to home.  I’ll be heading down to Island View in a few hours to see if I might just squeek in one more bird this week!

Ivan is still stuck on Balaklava with a broken winch, and he did NOT see the oriole today.  It may still be there, but goes to show that if you’re doing a big year, you really need to get to the birds as soon as you can!

I am very grateful for all of the kindnesses that made this week’s adventure possible!