It's Not All About Numbers - Winter Survival

Up until about 2 weeks ago our birding was going strong and our 2019 species count was starting to grow towards our goal of 200. Then came winter!

Victoria, BC is known to have one of the mildest climates in Canada during the winters months and although we can get the odd dusting of the white stuff from time to time, it doesn't last long with the rain trends that we are used to. But every once in a while winter can and does descend on our little city and everything grinds to a halt including some activities such as birding. Although there were some die-hards reporting on eBird around the city, we took to looking after our "crew" that came to our back yard seeking food sources as the temperatures plummeted below freezing and the snow started to fall, and did it ever fall! 

So far this month Victoria has received a whopping 68.3 cm of the white stuff (the most of any major Canadian city) and for a period of about a week it was a constant battle to shovel the driveway clear and keep the bird feeders well stocked and probably the most important, keep the hummingbird feeders from freezing.

5:00 am ... Time to service the feeders!

Our regular "crew" that visit the yard daily usually consists of about 15- 25 American Goldfinches, 8-10 House Finches, 12 Dark-eyed Juncos, several Golden-crowned Sparrows, House Sparrows, Bewick's Wrens and other expected species. However, on the first day of heavy snow we were treated to an amazing sight as well over 75 American Goldfinches, 24-30 House Finches as well as every other bird in the neighborhood came to our yard, making the activity look much like a swarm of bees as they took turns at our 6 feeders.

Although we didn't venture far from the house we did complete eBird checklists for our backyard and on that snowy day when we recorded over 75 AMGO's we did get an eBird notification that the observed species was higher than expected for our location and date but nice find! 

Our main concern was the Anna's Hummingbird feeders as they had to be brought in overnight, set out around 5:00 am and be constantly changed every 2 to 3 hours as the snow built up on them and the nectar began to freeze in the feeding holes. It was almost (not quite) like looking after a new born but both of our regular hummers seemed to have survived cold spell. 

The snow did make a nice backdrop for male House Finches

Last weekend we did manage to get out for a day and hike a couple of our favorite locations around town and spotted an new lifer (Brandt's Cormorant) and a few more species that we have seen in the past including gulls which we still record as gull sp. in eBird because they continue to be our nemesis bird(s) to identify. I think it might be time for a copy of Gulls Simplified!!!

This means that we are at the halfway point to reaching our goal of 200 species for 2019 with 10 more months of birding to go. 


2019 eBird Stats (February 22nd)

Mark - 102 species, 11 lifers, 108 checklists

Robyn - 100 species, 10 lifers, 100 checklists

The weather pattern that we are accustomed to seems to be returning to normal and the January crocuses and daffodils are recovering after being blanketed in almost two feet of snow. Lying in bed this morning I could here the chorus of Dark-eyed Junco's singing their mating songs which means that spring must be on it's way. Time to head out birding everyone!!

Two Birders Are Better Than One

I wonder how many birders miss a sighting because they go birding alone? It's becoming pretty clear that some of the success that we have had finding expected species and rarities is due to having two sets of eyes, two sets of binoculars, two iPhone's and one big camera lens. I'm not saying that technology is required to go birding but it sure doesn't hurt except for the Sherpa hauling it around ..... and that would be me! 

Finding rarities, especially ones not recently reported in our neck of the woods is pretty cool and we teamed up on February 2nd at the Swan Lake Christmas Hill Nature Sanctuary here in Victoria, BC to spot and identify a rare species. 

While I was busy taking photographs of the water fowl, Robyn spotted something that wasn't right, let me rephrase that, a flight pattern of birds that was abnormal for this time of year and immediately she identified them as swallows. I quickly located them through my camera lens and started shooting them as fast as the buffer in the camera would allow.

A short time later at Starbucks (ya, we go there a lot), I let the Cornell Lab's Merlin Bird ID app do it's thing and a quick text to Ann Nightingale confirmed our suspicion by identifying the birds as (4) Barn Swallows. Here's the thing .... they shouldn't be here at this time of year which makes them rare! Wooohoo!! High five for us!!!

Barns Swallows are commonly seen during the summer months and we are entertained most late summer afternoons in our back yard as they capture bugs in flight. But to see them this far north in February (heck, it's almost January) was very cool considering they normally start arriving mid March thru April. In fact, they should still be in Central America at this time of year!! Check out the very cool eBird Abundance Animation to follow their annual migration pattern for yourself. 

For The Love Of Birds

For the love of birds we're giving up birding, sort of. 

At the beginning of the year we set a couple of personal goals for 2019. 1) participate in the eBird "Checklist a Day" challenge and 2) try to complete a personal goal of an eBird Checklist for 365 consecutive days. Goal number 1 is not going to be a problem because it is an average of one checklist a day (not consecutive) and we are well on our way to completing this challenge in a couple of months.

Goal number 2 however had to come to an end because we found that juggling full time work, short daylight times and other life factors that get in the way have started to effect our love for birding and the quality of the birding experience was decreasing rapidly. Birding just to keep the daily checklist streak going shouldn't be about that, the birds and the experience should be reason why we go birding and not vise versa. For me, January was a grind especially through the week when I visited a few of the hotspots around work and day after day saw the same species of birds in a very short amount of time and never got to really appreciate what I was looking at. Yes, I did complete 31 consecutive days of birding in January (38 if you include days from December) but unless we win the lottery, retire or go on a really long birding vacation 38 days will be our longest consecutive streak for now. WOW!! I already feel the pressure to go birding just to complete a checklist has gone writing this!

January was a great month of birding for us with all of the new lifers and most of the birds counting towards our goal of seeing 200 species for 2019 happening on the weekends. Here's our totals.

2019 eBird Stats (January)

Mark - 98 species, 10 lifers, 81 checklists, 38 day streak
Robyn - 96 species, 9 lifers, 74 checklists, 29 day streak

For the most part we did find many of the birds that we specifically searched for on our weekend travels. eBird's Year Need Alerts and Rare Bird Alerts were invaluable to the numbers that we have recorded to date. There was only one bird that we didn't locate and it was a rarity that would have been nice to add to our lifer lists, a Dusky Thrush.

It seems that we were just a day or two late to see the Dusky Thrush that was seen for several days located just outside of Nanaimo, BC. We did get to meet several birders from different parts of Canada and the U.S. who had traveled long distances just to get a glimpse of the rare Dusky Thrush. Our 1.5 hour car drive seemed pale in comparison to what lengths some of the other birders went to just to see special rarity. 

Although we didn't locate the thrush we did manage to see 5 rare Palm Warblers that in the same area. 

Great news!! We have been accepted into the Rocky Point Bird Observatory Bird Banding Workshop taking place in March. We are really excited about participating in this workshop because it will really expand our identification skills which will help in some of our birding goals that we have planned for this year and in years to come.

Until next time ..... Happy birding!!