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.