Chapter 1: January

The big year started off slowly. I returned from Argentina on January 14^th, the same day that a Bohemian Waxwing was last seen at White Rock beach. I decided to quit my big year then. My first SemiPen birding outing wasn’t until the 20^th, when I went to Blackie Spit and saw the over-wintering Yellow-billed Loon and Pine Grosbeak, two species that don’t occur annually on the SemiPen. The big year was back on!

Yellow-billed Loon at Blackie Spit (January 20, 2024).

The winter of 2023/2024 brought an unprecedented coastal irruption of Pygmy Nuthatches. Several birds turned up at private feeders throughout Metro Vancouver but none were open to the public. I hoped to find a Pygmy Nuthatch of my own, and Alderwood Park seemed like the perfect place. It was also the only park that I had sufficient time to bird at before work during the short January days. Alderwood Park is a tiny park in my neighbourhood which contains a few ponds and riparian areas nestled between townhouses. The townhouses are surrounded by pine trees and at least a few have feeders visible from public areas. I have seen over 70 species there, but alas, could not add Pygmy Nuthatch to that list.   

My only other SemiPen birding outings in January were two evening walks at Nicomekl Portage Park. My primary target there was Black-crowned Night Heron, which were first discovered in the winter of 2021 and had returned each of the following winters. One bird was reported twice in January 2024, but I did not see it on either of my walks. The second target was Rusty Blackbird. This one was a long shot as it would be a first SemiPen record. However, one had been seen just across the Nicomekl River in December with the mixed blackbird flock in the agricultural area along 40^th Ave. Although that is outside the SemiPen, many of these blackbirds roost overnight in the conifers of the Nico-Wynd Golf Course. En route to their roost, they gather on the sailboat masts in the Nicomekl River allowing a potential opportunity to intercept the Rusty Blackbird. In fact, this is the only reliable way to get a Brewer’s Blackbird for the SemiPen, as they are a very infrequent visitor to any other location on the SemiPen. I observed flocks of up to 150 blackbirds but never connected with the Rusty Blackbird. Nor was it reported again from 40^th Ave.

SemiPen Big Year (2024): Prologue

As the Cordillera ice sheet retreated some 15,000 years ago, the underlying land began to rebound, gradually emerging from the sea. The Fraser River extended its floodplain and delta, first infilling the Pitt Valley and isolating Pitt Lake from the Salish Sea, then creating Richmond and Delta from its sedimentary deposits. Over thousands of years, these glacial and fluvial processes shaped the landmass of the Lower Mainland into its familiar form. And so, from these raised marine, deltaic, and fluvial deposits the Semiahmoo Peninsula was born.

The origin of the Semiahmoo Peninsula Checklist Area is much more recent, dating back to circa 2007. It was the brainchild of local birder MINE, who engaged several – three, to be exact – other birders who then resided on the Semiahmoo Peninsula to gauge their interest in keeping a bird list for a shared local patch. And so, the Semiahmoo Peninsula Checklist Area was born. It was decided that the geographic boundaries of the Semiahmoo Peninsula (hereafter, “SemiPen”) Checklist Area would consist of the Nicomekl River to the north, Highway 99 to the east, and the US border to the south. The SemiPen is approximately 3,600 hectares and its primary birding hot spots are Blackie Spit, Elgin Heritage Park, White Rock Pier, Kwomais Point, Crescent Park, and Sunnyside Woods. 

Figure 1: Semiahmoo Peninsula checklist area depicted by red lines. The broken line indicates where birds can be counted to an unlimited distance offshore as long as the observer is standing on land within the Semiahmoo Peninsula.  

These are the places where my formative years of birding took place. In my early teens, I would saddle my bike or hop on the bus to one of these hotspots and misidentify all sorts of birds. But as I got older and discovered greener pastures that lay just beyond the SemiPen, my birding focus shifted there. Twenty years later, I found myself feeling a bit bored of these greener pastures and needing some novel birding project; something to provide motivation or an objective to my birding in the year ahead. I decided a SemiPen big year could be it. 

Big years are generally disruptive affairs, requiring one to drop everything at a moment’s notice to chase every rarity the instant it is reported. However, the SemiPen checklist area is small and generally turns up only a handful of rarities each year, meaning I should not be burdened by frequent twitches in congested traffic. In contrast, there are many species that are scarce on the SemiPen but common in other parts of Metro Vancouver, meaning that encountering these species would provide further excitement to my birding. For example, while a Wood Duck in Metro Vancouver would ordinarily not be cause for celebration, finding one on the SemiPen would. Finally, there is no precedent for a SemiPen big year. Nobody has done one, so there is no measure for success. I could simply patch bird without the self-appointed pressure of reaching a certain tally. 

Nevertheless, I was still curious what my big year target should be. For context, there were six active birders keeping SemiPen life lists at the end of 2023, although several others had previously participated for varying durations. The collective Semiahmoo Peninsula list stood at 270 species, and the highest personal list was 240. I solicited the opinions of two of the SemiPen founding fathers. One responded with “maybe 180?” and the other said “something between 160 and 180 might be an expectable, reachable target”. Since the SemiPen is not an eBird county, there is no easy way to check eBird how many species are seen there each year. The best indicator may be the Blackie Spit hotspot, which probably accounts for most of them. There are many species that are easier to see at other locations, but they will still likely be sighed at Blackie Spit by someone at some point in the year. According to eBird, there were 177 species reported from Blackie Spit in 2023. This seemed to align well with the opined target of 180 and so I made that my goal.  

At the outset of the year, I said that I would not spend an inordinate amount of time on this project. This proved to be one of the best lies I’ve ever told myself.

N.B. - the entire account of my 2024 SemiPen big year was written after the fact in December 2024. Initially, I thought that my SemiPen big year would not be a remarkable affair and that nobody would care. That opinion has not changed. However, in contemplating whether to bother with this blog, I read my old posts from my 2015 Vancouver big year for the first time in nearly a decade, and in doing so, enjoyed reminiscing about those adventures, some of which I had almost all but forgotten about. So, I dedicate this blog to my future self.