Thursday 8 December 2016

Last-minute Gifts

After a lovely breakfast at Le Petit Chou, in Nanaimo, we saw a hawk in a tree. We quickly pointed our binoculars skywards and identified it as a Cooper's hawk. While we were staring at this beautiful bird, a passer-by read the universal language (bird in tree + people with binoculars = birders) and gave us a helpful tip about a mountain bluebird at Pipers Lagoon in Nanaimo.
We didn't have much to do that day, but we knew what we were going to do now! A mountain bluebird is a rare surprise on Vancouver Island and I was thrilled to find it before the calendar turns to 2017 and Big Year ends. The clock is ticking and I would very much appreciate help finding Ancient Murrelets and owls. And any other birds that aren't on my list, of course. (See link)
http://birdymcbirdface.blogspot.ca/2016/04/2016-list-of-birds.html
Ancient Murrelets! We spent the whole two-hour ferry ride from Duke Point to Tsawassen, sitting outside in the freezing rain looking for the little buggers, with no luck.


Butchered!

While we were walking on Comber's Beach in Pacific Rim National Park, we saw a Northern Shrike, identifiable from the Loggerhead shrike by the patch of yellow on the bill. Shrikes found their common name as the Butcher bird, because of their habit of killing small birds, mammals and insects and impaling them on barbed wire and twigs.
Shrikes are showy birds and this one flew alongside us for our whole walk.

Funnily enough, after looking for a shrike for all this time and finally finding one (it has been a hard search!) the very next day, Bingo! another shrike at the Nanaimo River Estuary.
And five days later at the Riefel Bird Sanctuary in Delta, there was another one! I guess Northern Shrikes have decided to be my Christmas present this month.

Field sketch, Northern Shrike

Owls? Owls where? Look up!

On a rainy day in November we returned to the Riefel Bird Sanctuary with the hope of seeing some owls. After a short, disappointing walk down the path, we stopped to ask a nice man named Fred if he had seen any owls. His reply was: "You're standing right underneath one!"
Sure enough, right above us was a great horned owl. Fred was also kind enough to show us a Saw-whet owl in a tree, which could have pooed on our heads and we would have looked up and still not seen it. With its head under its wing, it was so well camouflaged it was basically invisible.
Great Horned owl

Field sketch of Saw-whet




Our cold grey day was lit up by little explosions of black-capped chickadees every few steps.