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December 28, 2006  Year In Flight When the last days of a year teeter off into the setting sun and the promise of next year begins calling ‘halloo,’ it is time to pause and reflect. To that end, a synopsis seems to be in order. Birding is the game here - so a birding synopsis it is. In 2006 I stayed within 75 miles of home and was well entertained by our local birds. I counted just one lifer but considering that I’ve seen most of this area’s birds, one is a good number. There were also a few other memorable birding incidents this year. I’ll start with the lifer because it might be considered a high water mark for a year’s birding. It happened over the 3rd and 4th of June on the annual Churn Creek bird trip (This is perhaps my 12th consecutive trip, by the way, and I birded as never before.) Aided and abetted by Mike, I intended to retrieve the biggest bird species day tally ever. And by the time camp was set up on the banks of the Fraser River my one day total was about 118. (I can’t actually confirm the number until I dig out the day sheet, but suffice it to say it was my best ever one-day total.) After a night’s rest Mike and I went up to the Empire Valley Ranch. When we passed the lake at the top we recorded a Lark Sparrow, not a lifer for me but only the second time I had seen that bird. Other noteworthy sightings on that leg of the journey were a pair of Say’s Phoebes in the bare limbs of a Ponderosa pine at the edge of a deserted corral. After visiting the Gang Ranch we dropped almost to river level then stopped to investigate a grotto a short distance from the road. Mike followed the trail a ways then returned and announced that a Rock Wren was singing its heart out. In a previous year he saw one in this same location, but I failed to find it. This time was different. Even before seeing the Wren we heard its song. I later made a note of the sighting in my Sibley’s Guide to birds. It reads ‘a lifer at Fraser River near Churn Creek- the grotto waterfall - song in 3’s, sat on rock, Cooper’s Hawk flew near, disappeared came out again, sang, flew lower, sang again.’ This was my lifer for the year. On the last day of the trip I saw the largest concentration of Nighthawks I’d ever seen. They were all feeding over a stormy wetland along Meadow Lake Road. I couldn’t give an accurate count but there were dozens. On June 5th I was taken to a wet meadow just a few miles from my house where Guy discovered a very co-operative resident Great Gray Owl. There must have been a nest nearby keeping the bird active all day. I visited on a number of occasions. This is the only time I’d ever enjoyed the Great Grey owl in summer. On June 8th I visited the 101 Marsh and found a Three-toed Woodpecker nest in a recently dead pine. The nest was only 20 feet from a very rotten poplar containing a Three-toed nest from the previous year. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the same pair doing the nesting. This finding as memorable because I’ve been told that dead pine isn’t as popular with cavity-making birds as Aspen. This is probably still the case but finding a hard, dead pine recently excavated by a Three-toed Woodpecker was still interesting. On June 19th a Pacific-slope flycatcher, a bird normally restricted to the dry country near the Fraser River, took up residence in a back yard in town. Once in town it called out its diagnostic ‘psweet-peet-see’ for a number of weeks. No doubt it was attempting to persuade a mate to take up residence, but that outcome seemed unlikely. I found my first Redstart nest. A Redstart is a brilliant black and red warbler that loves riparian areas, and though I knew they nested somewhere along the banks of Bridge Creek every year, I never (until now) found where. Luckily this pair chose a very exposed spot in a lone willow leaning over the stream. Perhaps this rather inferior choice was a result of a strange thing I discovered about the pair - both appeared to be females. In further investigation I found that Redstarts are rather unusual among songbirds in that the male does not achieve full male plumage in its first spring and looks remarkably like the female. Despite this, a first-year male may pursue and court a mate and in this case win a female though in so doing may be left with inferior nest sites due to competition from maturely plumage male Redstarts. Throughout this summer, as in the two previous summers, a female Black-chinned hummingbird came daily to the feeder. There was no way to tell if she nested but at one point I thought I saw a brood patch and learned that female Black-chins will mate and then strike off on their own to nest without any male seemingly needed in the whole enterprise. This year, for the first time, I finally lured a Mountain Bluebird pair into using one of my bird boxes. I realized, as nest box users, they are rather bizarre and certainly a lot more finicky than Tree Swallows. On September 11th I received a call from Guy. He insisted that he had pinned down a White-headed Blackbird rumoured to be in the area for some weeks. Sure enough, we arrived at the spot and waited just a short while before the mystery bird arrived. It was a white-headed female Brewer’s Blackbird that also showed glimpses of white feathering on other parts of its body. On September 7th, near Buffalo Creek, I saw the largest gathering of Turkey Vultures I’ve ever seen. Seven of the large black birds soared above a prominent rock and three perched on a dead tree. Never before had I seen a perching Turkey Vulture. The area around Stan Halcro arena reintroduced me to two often elusive winter birds. One was a Snow Bunting. The other was a Grey-crowned Rosy-finch. The Rosy-finch was the light gray headed form known as the coastal race. The grand finale of 2006, (unless topped in the next few days by more wondrous sightings,) is three Chestnut-backed Chickadees that arrived on December 8th. They still visit the feeder daily and have melded well with the local Black-capped and Mountain Chickadee flocks. So that’s the way my birding year of 2006 was. And no doubt, after I’m done here, I will recall a dazzling sighting or birding incident that went unmentioned. Oh well, must press on. Isn’t that 2007 just up ahead? To e-mail Tom CLICK HERE To look at previous column CLICK HERE |
