And by snow, I mean SNOW Buntings, SNOWy Owls, and why not just throw in a SNOWy Egret for good measure?

Despite almost daily birding and lots of help from other birders, in the last ten days, I haven’t managed to add a single new bird to my list.  This is a little frustrating for this time of year, as this is often the time that strange birds will show up.  Let’s hope that December swings back the other way.

I’ve visited a lot of places since I last wrote. An early morning trip to Maber Flats with Jeremy Gatten, Nathan Hentze and Stephen Roias in search of a Red-throated Pipit provided some great scenery, and a massive number of birds, but no pipit.

 

A trip to Whiffin Spit with Kim Beardmore looking for a Snow Bunting produced a Lapland Longspur.  Sadly, the Snow Bunting was being seen at Island View Beach all the way across town–but I didn’t know until much later in the afternoon. I continued on to do a seawatch at Sheringham Point.

 

The birds were distant, and although I saw some shearwaters, I wasn’t able to determine if they were Sooty or Short-tailed.  I also heard some shorebirds fly by that matched the calls of Red Phalarope, but without photos, witnesses, or a solid look at them, I’m not adding them to the list.

The next day, I scoured  Island View Beach and Saanichton Spit for four hours to find the bunting but came away empty-handed.

A trip to Port Renfrew a couple of days after a pretty good windstorm which resulted in some decent waves didn’t produce new birds.  Earlier in the year, locals suggested that Brown Pelicans often came into the bay after storms, but such was not the case this time around.  It was a gorgeous day, though, and that made the visit quite pleasant.

When I went to the pub to grab a bite to eat, I was able to access wifi and found out that two Snow Buntings had been seen on the Dock Road in Cowichan Bay. My GPS said that I couldn’t make it before dark, but I had to try!

I arrived at Dock Road with a bit of light left, but the gate was locked, meaning that there was about a 15 minute walk to where the birds had been seen.  I headed out as quickly as I could, spotting a Short-eared Owl hunting in the estuary as I went.  That added one bird to my Cowichan and Victoria Checklist list.   The owl wasn’t the only one hunting.  As the light dwindled, shots were fired into the estuary.  It was a little unnerving walking in the dark when guns were being fired.  I don’t know how the hunters could have possibly picked up their ducks in that light!

Not surprisingly, no Snow Buntings materialized. I found out later that birders that arrived less than an hour after the word was put out didn’t find the birds either.  I don’t give up easily though, and was back first thing in the morning. Fellow birder, Christine Cuthill and I walked along the restricted roadway to the office, to ask permission to search the parking area where the birds had been seen.  We got permission–and news that the office staff had seen the birds several days earlier right in front of the office!  They took pictures, but didn’t know what the birds were.  There were a lot of gulls parked on the parking lot, but we couldn’t find a bunting.

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The rain and windstorm on Tuesday provided me with a much needed day at home.  Lots of things planned–until the power went out at 10 am.  Fortunately, some of the things I needed to do were entirely analog and I was able to make a little bit of progress on my agenda.  Things started to crawl though when the power was still out several hours later.  Despite a forecast of an 8 pm return to the light, the electricity wasn’t actually restored until almost 5 am — 19 hours later.  I got up  and got ready to head to Goose Spit in Courtenay Comox in the hopes of finding something new.

That morning, there was a very bad accident on the Malahat.  I was on the mountain when an ambulance screamed by.  The radio said that southbound traffic was shut down, but a minute before I reached the accident scene, northbound traffic was also stopped.  When the word got out that it would be several hours, I turned around, heading to Esquimalt Lagoon and Portage inlet before joining up with birders Michael Simmons and Daniel Donnecke to check out the birds in Oak Bay. Small numbers of expected birds were present at all my stops, but nothing outstanding.  That is, until Rick Schortinghuis called from Esquimalt Lagoon with both an Iceland Gull and a Black-legged Kittiwake in the very spot I’d been birding three hours earlier.  Daniel, Michael and I crossed town and arrived at the lagoon to find that the birds had been abducted by aliens–vanished without a trace, despite three birders watching them at the scene.  These are birds that are already on my list, but not on my Victoria list, so would have been good adds.  It was not to be!

I finally made my way to Courtenay-Comox the next day, and despite a beautiful sunny day, Goose Spit did not produce anything unexpected.

I was just about to move along to an area where I could scope a raft of birds more easily when I got a note from Tracy Anderson, who was visiting from Hawaii. Her mentor and close friend, Maj Birch, founder of the Mountainaire Avian Rescue Society, had passed away the previous night. I picked up Tracy and we birded around the area, but did not find any of my “missing” birds.

 

Friday and Saturday were occupied with more local birding: Maber Flats, Martindale Flats, Victoria Airport, Observatory Hill, Viaduct Flats, Outerbridge Park, Victoria airport.  All great birding places, but no new species.  On Saturday, I took a couple of visitors from Texas for a quick spin to look for Sky Larks, but we couldn’t even raise one of those.  Fortunately, both Mike Perkins and Nic Costanzo did manage to get a few life birds on their whirlwind trip.  They’ll be back for the Sky Larks another time!

 

To wrap up the week, I went on the Victoria Natural History Society’s Coho crossing field trip. In other years, they have turned up Short-tailed Shearwater and Red Phalarope, and I had high hopes for Brown Pelican and maybe even Brown Booby (one was seen in Port Angeles last week).  It was a nice calm day on the water.  We passed through a large gull flock  as we left Victoria, but just as it has been everywhere else this week, all of the birds are already on my list.

Let’s hope the next week is a little more exciting!