For this week's birding course our group met in the extreme south of the city. Here the suburbs are quickly consuming the prairie along the Bow River and the landscape is rapidly changing. A state-of-the-art water treatment plant has just been completed next to the new freeway bridge. Two housing developments are being expanded, one on each side of the river, and a new golf course abuts the provincial park boundary. We explored a strip of land that is being preserved against the river, where there are some decent sized islands providing refuges of habitat for various species. Here's a map of our route:
We enjoyed observing Ospreys and Bald Eagles nesting and feeding along the river but the highlight was probably the sparrows. There were four species observed by the group and we had great practice identifying them by sight and sound. I've included a photo of each along with an embedded sound file from the Xeno-Canto public archive.
The Clay-coloured Sparrow is often tricky to see and is easily identified by its call - a series of insect-like buzzes. The unstreaked breast, grey nape, and buffy feathers behind and below the eye are good field marks visible in this photo.
There were lots of Savannah Sparrows, which are more visible than the other species often singing from the tops of fence posts or grass stalks. Their song, a mixture of chirps and buzzing sounds tells us to "take, take it EAAAZZZY"!
This Song Sparrow popped into view close to the Clay-coloured pictured above. Why isn't this another Savannah Sparrow? The lack of the yellow spot above the eye, the longer tail and the larger bill are all reasonable field marks but again what is distinctive is its voice. These birds start with 2-4 distinct tones and then sings a lazy trill of notes.
The Vesper Sparrow was our last sparrow of the morning. I heard one singing far off in the distance and eventually another member of the group picked out a bird several hundred metres away on top of a rock. After setting up the scope we were able to confirm Vesper Sparrow with a similarly fuzzy image to the one above (which was actually taken near Strathmore on last year's May species count). The song of the Vesper Sparrow often starts with one or two pairs of clear even-toned notes followed by a fast musical trill.Larkwire rather charmingly translates this as "oh, oh, my, my, it's-such-a-beautiful-day"
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.
Nice little piece on the front of today's "Life" section on Calgary area birding, focusing on Frank Lake. Online version at the link below, along with a lovely photo of Frank Lake.
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 *):
This is the fourth and final in a series of posts featuring birds from our recent trip to San Diego. You can find the other parts here: part 1, part 2, and part 3.
When thinking about birding around San Diego, there are so many habitats - like the lagoons, beaches, and deserts in the previous posts - it is easy to overlook the great variety of birds that can be found in backyards throughout the area. We were fortunate in finding a rental property that shared a lovely garden with our very generous hosts. This habitat provided some great birding from the moment we woke up on our first morning.
Almost the first birds we saw on the trip - Anna's Hummingbird, Calypte anna, and Black Phoebe, Sayornis nigricans, side by side above the back fence.
The Black Phoebes were quite common and we saw them at almost every park we stopped at along the coast. Similarly hummingbirds were widespread and often seen feeding on flowers in the same parks and gardens - we had three in the yard at the same time one afternoon. Of course certain species are very cosmopolitan and we found several species that would be considered "the usual suspects" in Calgary, at a different time of year.
A House Finch regaling us with morning song - the yellow-orange coloration is not a morph I've seen in Alberta
Yellow-rumped Warblers (Audubon's subspecies) are year-round residents in parts of California but didn't show up in Alberta until about four weeks after I took this photo
Similarly, White-crowned Sparrows spend the winter here and should be showing up any day now
However the backyard birds aren't just different colour morphs or out of season Alberta birds. In some cases the populations are dramatically different, like what seems to be a swap in numbers between House Sparrows and Song Sparrows, with the latter flitting around in every bush and picnic area. There are also those birds that are commonplace in the San Diego area but never seen north of the 49th parallel such as the above Black Phoebe and the aptly named California Towhee. These birds were everywhere, announcing their presence with a distinct, slightly metallic "teek" as they forage in the brush or on the ground.
This California Towhee was feeding underneath a Hyacinth Macaw at the San Diego Zoo - I took a little flak from my wife for taking this photo first! Definitely an "LBJ" but also a real stunner - it's all in the eyes.
I hope you've enjoyed this little overview of my brief exposure to southern California birding. I look forward to the next visit and recommend this to anyone looking for a different birding experience.
No birding this weekend as I'm getting ready to take my Grade 9 class to the Gulf Islands (Vancouver Island, BC) for their sailing trip. Here's something we should ponder as we're chasing migrants around this month....
This is the third part of a series on our recent trip to San Diego - you can find part 1 here, and part 2 here.
This looks promising...
A successful birding trip is usually preceded by careful preparations and review. When visiting a completely new area this is particularly important, so for our California trip there were three pieces to those preparations. Firstly, following the appropriate listserv (email bird alerts) to get a flavour for species and locations. Secondly, based on this information, generating and studying a list of common and target species. The final piece was researching nearby hotspots - in the case of the non-birding holiday, nearby being the critical word. "A Birder's Guide to Southern California" by Brad Schram was a fantastic resource and, along with online research, I discovered that our rented vacation property was less than a mile from the San Elijo Lagoon - complete with trails, several different habitat types, and an interpretive centre.
Looking west across the marsh from the bend in the river just below the blue place mark above.
The two CalgaryBirder Jr's and I heading up the trail 180° from the above photo.
I made two visits to the lagoon - one with the family for a short walk and later an early morning solo excursion for a couple of hours. This totalled 39 species including on the adjacent Cardiff State Beach. The total species count for the lagoon is around 300, with 65 recorded as breeding, which gives you some idea of how I was just scratching the surface. Here are a few highlights, mostly digiscoped - a scope is very useful although not vital as the waterfowl and waders seemed generally less skittish than in Alberta wetlands. For more information on San Elijo and the species found there you can look at the lagoon conservancy website or at this birder's overview of the various trails.
Great Egret, Ardea alba, with American Wigeon in the background
Digiscoping hummingbirds is often difficult (without a feeder) but this male Anna's Hummingbird, Calypte anna, was very cooperative
A Green-winged Teal, Anas crecca, with a small flock of dowitchers - almost certainly Long-billed Dowitchers, Limnodromus scolopaceus
Certainly the highlight of the lagoon, possibly of the entire trip, this normally secretive Virginia Rail, Rallus limicola, was just wandering about in plain view, at least by Rail/Sora standards.
Passerines tend to be tricker to photograph, but I managed to get a half-decent shot of another lifer - the Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Polioptila cerulean.
A taste of home - American Avocet, Recurvirostra americana, and Least Sandpipers, Calidris minutia
A quiet, reflective moment for this Snowy Egret, Egretta thula
