At the end of April, I took my Grade 9 class on their West Coast sailing trip to British Columbia's Gulf Islands. Like last year, I thought it would be interesting for you if I featured a few of the birds and birding hotspots that we saw during the trip. Once again the students were unsurprisingly bemused by my birdwatching but I think I made a few connections. At least two or three students were getting very good at identifying seabirds by the end of the trip and were doing so without any prompting from me. We also found a beautiful Townsend's Warbler which hung around on a low branch long enough for one teenager to say "OK, I guess that's pretty cool looking"! Progress?
The warbler was on Tumbo Island, part of the Gulf Islands National Park Reserve, just a short distance from Boiling Reef where we went to look for sea lions, porpoises, and a diverse collection of seabirds. As you can see from the map below, the reef sits right at the convergence of currents where the tides empty and fill the Strait of Georgia. This twice daily flow stirs up nutrients creating a rich feeding ground for all types of marine life.
The currents were in full flow when we were there, creating surging whitewater between the lighthouse on the point of Saturna Island and the reef, which was covered in Stellar's Sealions. The loud and smelly marine mammals were certainly the most obvious life to be seen but porpoises were busy feeding between hundreds of bobbing seabirds. Among the birds, alcids were probably the most common group of species. These are sometimes described as the penguins of the north, swimming underwater with powerful wing strokes to propel them along in pursuit of prey, and I managed to get half-decent shots of three species during the trip (some not taken right at the above location - click images to enlarge)
Pigeon Guillemot, Cepphus columba, after a successful hunt
Common Murre, Uria aalge, this is a first year plumage bird (according to Mr. Sibley!)
Rhinoceros Auklet, Cerorhinca monocerata, - most of the alcids would dive as the boat approached and surface hundreds of metres away so it was nice to see a few in flight showing off their plumage
Alcids may have provided the diversity but it was the gulls that provided the numbers, specifically thousands of Bonaparte's Gulls rafting up and flying around in huge flocks as they prepared for their spring migration. A little further to the north, in Active Pass, we sailed through a single tightly grouped flock which had, at a very conservative guess, 5000-7000 individuals.
It's nice to have friends - one of these Bonaparte's Gulls has lost a contact lens! (Actually they are feeding on small organisms on the surface of the water that have been stirred up by the current, which is more scientific but less funny.)
There were also some life birds to be had in the area as well. Among the many sea ducks were White-winged Scoter, a new species for me, along with Surf Scoter. Perhaps most exciting were Long-tailed Ducks which felt like a life bird as my previous "tick" had been long range scope views of a female in winter plumage on Glenmore Reservoir.
Oh, that's why they call it a Long-tailed Duck!
So those are some highlights of the impressive diversity of nearshore seabirds that we saw on our trip. I'll follow-up with some passerines and more familiar landbirds in the coming weeks.
The past weekend began with the fourth Saturday of the Friends of Fish Creek Park Spring Birding Course. I was a little tired out after a week in the Gulf Islands with thirty-two of my Junior High students but made this an "NMT" outing by biking to the reservoir, which is why all images in this post are through a scope. It was certainly worth the effort as the weather was lovely with the sun periodically peaking out from between the clouds. We were entertained by a pair of Red-breasted Nuthatches emptying wood chips from their nest hole and, despite the songbirds being a little thin on the ground, we also watched a Ruby-crowned Kinglet singing boldly from the top of a tall spruce.
Unfortunately I didn't capture the nest cavity cleaning process in the above video but it's nice to see breeding behaviour in action anyway
South Glenmore Park is a mix of many habitat types: a stand of old growth spruce trees borders on aspen parkland which in turn borders on fragments of boreal forest in the Weaselhead Natural Area. Alongside these woodlands there are grassy fields, a river delta, and of course the reservoir itself. It was there where we found much of the bird activity with twenty-eight species on or beside the water, twelve of which were Alberta "first of year" for me, plus a life bird - the Say's Phoebe.
My life Say's Phoebe, Sayornis saya, seems much less interested in me than I am in him
The reservoir itself was covered in birds which gave great scope (and closer) views. The variety of waterfowl made for a productive learning experience for the participants as we were able to pick out and compare species. A Canvasback paddled around beside some Redheads, two pairs of Ring-necked Ducks hung out with a small flock of Lesser Scaup, and so on. Our group was perhaps most impressed by the Western Grebes, which were actively feeding and calling just a hundred metres or less from our viewpoint.
The Western Grebe, Aechmophorus occidentals, appears both stately and savage.
As is often the case, I learned a valuable bird identification lesson myself, in the form of a flock of thirty gulls with black heads that flew across the reservoir and landed on the far side. "More Franklin's!", I called out, assuming that they would match the hundred or so that were already there. "Bonaparte's Gulls", corrected our group's leader. Not exactly a rookie mistake - they are pretty close - but I should have known better and not made the immediate logical assumption, particularly as just four days earlier I had sailed through a flock of 5000+ Bonaparte's out on the West Coast. Birding is certainly a hobby where jumping to conclusions is all too easy!
Bonaparte's Gull, Chroicocephalus philadelphia, not on Glenmore Reservoir, but earlier in the week in the rain of the Gulf Islands.
In spite of this minor setback, I thoroughly enjoyed the morning's birding and am looking forward to next week's outing. More on the West Coast to follow in May...
Here's a list of species seen on this outing (plus two en route marked with *):
I returned from Vancouver Island to find my backordered digiscoping bracket waiting for me. The bracket attaches a point-and-shoot camera to the eyepiece of my scope and has a cable release for vibration free pictures. I headed to Frank Lake, just east of High River to try it out.
Savannah Sparrow, Passerculus sandwichensis
As would be expected there were many Savannah Sparrows in the grassland around the lake, as well as two Common Ravens being mobbed by a mixed flock of blackbirds (both Red-winged and Yellow-headed were present in large numbers around the lake).
By the time I reached the hide I realized that digiscoping was going to be somewhat unnecessary - close encounters were to be the order of the day. Franklin's Gulls were standing on the pathway to the hide, and several Yellow-headed Blackbirds fed juveniles in the reeds beside the boardwalk. A pair of Forster's Terns were also nesting nearby as one repeatedly flew at my head. A family of Coots had their nest six feet from the path and swam about happily a little further away while I set up the scope.
American Coot (and 2 very funky looking chicks!), Fulica americana
I spent a little over an hour in the hide while several adult and juvenile Eared Grebes swam about in the reeds. Further out on the lake, Western Grebes could be seen, including some young. The distinctive silhouettes of White-face Ibis flew past three times, and a pair of Barn Swallows repeatedly flew up to the window to see who was intruding on their territory. A pair of Lesser Scaup also landed in front of the hide and the male chased the female around in circles, repeatedly biting her neck until he finally mounted her, pushing her almost completely under the water. It was easy to see how competitive breeding can, in some cases, kill female dabbling ducks.
juvenile Eared Grebe, Podiceps nigricollis
All in all a pleasant afternoon with 19 species seen at the lake. I'm looking forward to playing around with the digiscoping some more over the summer.
Gulls (Larids) are not everyone’s favorite bird – they’re loud, the steal food from people and other birds. They are also one family of birds that has, on balance, benefited from human impacts on the environment, which probably means they are displacing other species in certain habitats. And of course they poop. A lot. In one case on this trip, on one of my students.
With all that being said I think they are extremely cool birds. They are intelligent and adaptable. They are accomplished and graceful fliers. They also, as I discovered in my bird rehab volunteer days, have an amazing gape to which this great photo barely does justice.
Source and License: Flickr Creative Commons, Photo by Ingrid Taylar
With that in mind, one of the things I wanted to do on this trip was try to sort out gull identification a little bit - Calgary is not really a gull hotspot! Although I freely admit that a Thayer's or Iceland Gull could fly right in front of me and I would miss it, I think I've figured out a system that works for the more common species. For example, dark iris + medium gray back + matching wingtips = Glaucous-winged Gull, here on the dock at South Pender Island.
Glaucous-winged Gull, Larus glaucescens
Of course the whole three-year gull thing, with partial molts and different plumages makes my head spin. As far as I can make out the bird below, based on the heavy black bill and primaries matching the body colour is also a Glaucous-winged Gull, in this case a first winter bird.
Glaucous-winged Gull, Larus glaucescens
Lastly, while on the subject of gulls, we saw a neat phenomenon on the last night of the trip as we were anchored in Fulford Harbour. There was a large flock of gulls and some alcids (auklets?) some way out in the channel, apparently feeding on a school of fish. Over the course of an hour or so, as the fish moved closer to shore (presumably spawning and/or following the sunlight as it set) the alcids departed. The gulls - predominantly and appropriately Herring Gulls - followed all the way to the shoreline, where there were two Belted Kingfishers that joined in the feeding, as well as several Buffleheads, perhaps cleaning up fish eggs? In any case it was great to see several species working together in their respective niches and a great learning opportunity for the students on the boat who could really see the ecosystem working as a whole.
Gull spp. (mostly Herring) feeding on fish in shoal
One more West Coast post to wrap things up in another two days...
