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July 10, 2003  Back-Yard Bird Guide At times, when I wander the hills and dales of our local area looking for birds, I occasionally imagine what it would be like to guide someone who was unfamiliar with our area. I usually have this thought when I am experiencing a particularly productive day seeing all sorts of hard to get species and encountering interesting bird activities. I never think of it when I’m trudging through a dismal rain or sweating profusely through a willow tangle in July. This daydream of being a guide doesn’t hinge on any monetary gain it is simply a chance to test oneself in the face of some welcome pressure as well as show off our particular birds of interest. Such a day happened recently. I received a phone call informing me that some birders were at the art centre in town and had a few questions about the birds of the South Cariboo. The birder was put on the line. Wow! This was interesting! A few questions from the voice with an English accent on the phone told me this was no dabbler in the pastime of birding. Could a Gray Owl be seen this time of year? What about a Three-toed Woodpecker? The Gray owl would be a hard one to fill but as for Three-toed Woodpeckers, I had seen more in the area of the old ski hill this spring than I had in previous years. I gave a few ideas where to look in the vicinity of the town and hung up. In no time I was back on the phone asking if these birders wanted me to come along on their walk through the park. I was on my way. Barbara and Mike were very pleasant people from a place I had never heard of in England. They were going on a ‘non birding’ trip, at least that’s what Mike told Barbara when they left for North America. Now here we were enduring a rather hot Cariboo afternoon searching for birds. It was soon apparent that Mike was an incredible birder. He had been to North America before and I dare say his life list of birds on this continent is much longer than mine. Barbara, though she professed not to be quite as enthusiastic as her husband, was keen to search and had probably seen her share of birds too. As I said it was a hot afternoon and heat plays rough with birds. Usually they sit quietly somewhere until it cools. Rarely do they sing. I need singers if I’m going to spot anything. It slowly dawned on me as we listened intently for Woodpeckers, that this spring, when I saw the large numbers of Three-toed Woodpeckers, it was before the logging began in the area around the base of the ski hill. Now, all the bug-killed trees that had attracted the Woodpeckers had been felled. It was a bit of a wasteland except for the deciduous trees, which attract Sapsuckers, but not the Three-toed. I was delighted to hear that Mike needed a Red-naped Sapsucker for his list. Oddly, or at least it seemed odd to me, he had a Red-breasted Sapsucker a bird we have here but quite hard to find. As for Red-napes, they’re as common as dirt. Well wouldn’t you know it, I couldn’t lead our party of two to even one common-as-dirt bird. The Lincoln Sparrow was another bird on Mike’s list. I usually find this bird by listening for its song. Few birds were singing as we walked so the Lincoln remained elusive and unfound. It was beginning to look bad. Here I was with two birders who were so organized that they had a ‘hit list’ of needed species and I couldn’t land one for them. Actually I wasn’t taking it too hard and Mike and Barbara, well aware of the vagaries of birding, were having a good time investigating species they had seen before. As we returned to the art centre, a bit weary from the heat, I made a suggestion. I swore I could get Mike the Red-naped Sapsucker lifer if they came to the property I was housesitting. I felt confident in making this promise because day after day I had been watching a pair of these Woodpeckers drilling holes in the ornamental trees on the west side of the house. Now that the Sapsuckers were feeding their young they would be very active. We soon arrived at the house but before we went around the side to see the Sapsuckers we paused for lemonade. The two traveling birders enjoyed the close-up view of the hummingbird feeder alive with Rufous and Calliope Hummers. I was amused by Mike’s use of the word ‘bins’ for binoculars. I have used the abbreviated "binos" and "binocs," but I must admit bins are really what they are. Thirsts quenched, we went round the outside of the house and stood near the ornamental trees. Without missing a beat the Sapsucker pair were there, going about the business of soaking insects in tree sap and delivering to the young in a nest across the pasture. We spent some time gazing up at the Red-naped Sapsuckers and then the birders headed back to 100 Mile House. I told Mike that the Lincoln Sparrow would sing early in the morning in the park and might be more co-operative than it was today. He said they would do some looking early and then they would be heading toward the Yellowhead Highway, stopping at Clearwater and moving on toward Jasper. Luckily many of the birds they needed might certainly be found in that mountainous area. The next day I caught up to the pair of birders as they had lunch behind the tourist information building. Mike had seen the Lincoln Sparrow in the early part of the day. Still no Three-toed was found. We spent some time talking about birding and how the town of 100 Mile House needed to have its own bird checklist. As I explained before a checklist is like a menu of birds that an area has. Trying to bird in an area without a suitable checklist is like going into a restaurant and guessing what they might be able to serve up. As luck would have it the mayor of our fair town happened by. I introduced her to our visitors and they mentioned the checklist to her. I told her I could organize such a list with some seed money I had recently received for such a project but didn’t have the money to print it. She promised to help. Wow! It was the power of tourism in action! I bid farewell to Mike and Barbara, as fine a pair of birders as one could hope to meet, and wished them well on the next leg of their non-birding holiday. Mike said that he would be writing to let me know how the rest of their trip went. It was great to bring my daydream of guiding non-residents through some birding terrain but certainly an eye-opener how much people not familiar with our area can know about our bird life. To e-mail Tom CLICK HERE To look at previous column CLICK HERE |
