Bad Weather, We Still Found Birds!

Storm after storm after storm! That’s been the trend for the past couple of weeks on the south coast of British Columbia after a relatively mild and dry fall. Not only is it raining cats and dogs but the near hurricane force winds offshore and the fact that we work full time has dampened our birding opportunities. We really should just quit our jobs and go on a global big year!!

We did manage to spend most of last Saturday on a big birding walk (20 km) around the Victoria, BC inner harbour and waterfront even though the winds were blowing pretty good. Our expectations weren’t very high but to our surprise we managed to see 25 species including a Common Murre which was our #146 lifer in the lee of the wind behind the Ogden Point breakwater. Several species like small flocks of Buffleheads, Harlequin Ducks and Double-crested Cormorants were seen several hundred feet offshore bobbing up and down in the cresting waves.

Say Cheese!!

Of course, there were lots of gulls trying to just stay airborne in the turbulent wind currents and many were just hanging out for tourists like us to take their pictures.

Glaucous-winged Gull? What do you think?

Speaking of gulls …. They make our minds hurt with so many species, juvenile, 1st winter, 2nd winter, adult nonbreeding, adult breeding etc. etc. We might just start calling them BWGJ’s (Big White Grey Job’s) from now on. Or maybe it's time that we invested in a copy of the book Gulls Simplified by Pete Dunne and Kevin Karlson? At least we’ve stopped calling them seagulls!

The 2018 Bird Studies Canada Christmas Bird Count for Kids took place on the weekend at our “patch” which is just over the backyard fence. We made sure our feeders were well stocked for the usual “crew” of birds that visit our yard many times a day and completed an eBird checklist of the patch earlier in the morning seeing or hearing 22 species including a Merlin which was our lifer #145! Having only used eBird for the past month our species total in our patch (Beckwith Park) is now at 34 with the top eBirder having recorded 68 species. The bar is set high but it sure would be nice to get that top spot in our local patch.

I finished reading Noah Strycker's Birding Without Borders last week and found it truly inspiring. Noah's account of birding for 365 days straight in 2015 with the sole purpose of breaking the birding "Big Year" world record was amazing. All the planning, the miles upon miles of travel, the never ending getting up before dark only after a few hours of sleep and not knowing what the day would bring made for an exciting adventure that I couldn't stop reading. If you haven't read this book, do yourself a favour and pick up a copy. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Christmas Day is now less than a week away which also means that we're getting closer to spending Boxing Day through to New Year's Day at the Pedder Bay RV Resort & Marina. Pedder Bay is also one of the sites that the Rocky Point Bird Observatory uses for its migration program which we volunteer at during the summer and fall months. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and we'll get some great birding days while we're there.

Merry Christmas and happy birding!!

Mark & Robyn