I have a ritual for the first day of each month, one that is practiced by even fewer birders than SemiPen listing. This ritual is the AMAT list, which stands for All the Months Added Together, but can be simplified as monthly life listing. When the month rolls over, I attempt to find all staked out rarities that I have never seen in that calendar month. One of my nemesis birds for the month of May is Willet. For the last several years, one has wintered at Boundary Bay but typically disappears sometime in late April. This year he had lingered into the final days of April, having been seen at Blackie Spit on April 26 and Boundary Bay on April 28 and 29. However, by moving between both locations, the Willet complicated my decision regarding when and where I should look on the first of May. Tides are an important factor. The morning high tide was suitable for Boundary Bay, whereas the evening high tide was not sufficiently high to bring the shorebirds close enough to the dyke for careful study. Such a high tide is not essential for Blackie Spit, therefore, I decided to go to Boundary Bay in the morning, and if the Willet was not there, I figured I could still look for it at Blackie Spit that evening. With this strategy, as long as the Willet stayed at either location for the entire day, I should be just about guaranteed to see it.
While I was at Boundary Bay that morning, the Willet was at Blackie Spit. Adding insult to injury, so was a flock of Gray-crowned Rosy-Finches, another great would-be SemiPen year bird. I could not relocate either bird that evening. A Short-eared Owl sitting in the saltmarsh across from the spit and a Northern House Wren at Dunsmuir Gardens offered some consolation, both being good SemiPen year birds and the owl also being a May lifer. However, that sighting of the Willet on May 1 was the last one of the spring, and so it remains my May nemesis bird.
Northern House Wren at Blackie Spit (May 1, 2024)
Things improved on the morning of May 3 when I found SemiPen’s first Black-and-White Warbler at Blackie Spit. My camera battery happened to be dead, but MEHA managed to snap a photo. Good birds kept coming to Blackie Spit. Early on the morning of May 11, while I was at Brunswick Point, a flock of American White Pelicans were found. When I went to search for them the tide had already fallen leaving very little water in Mud Bay. With no pelicans in sight, I continued my search around the bend to Crescent Beach where scoping the tideline many kilometres away I found a different big white bird – Great Egret. It turned out that MITA had actually found it less than an hour earlier at Blackie Spit, but those news had not reached me so I was pleasantly surprised to “find” it on my own. However, it seemed that the rising thermals carried the pelicans away to their next destination.
On May 16, ANFO found a Heerman’s Gull at White Rock Pier; a spectacular spring record. This species is typically seen in Metro Vancouver in August and September after dispersing north from their nesting colonies off Mexico, but in very small numbers and rarely on the SemiPen. On May 17 it was relocated by ROFO and I wasted no time to go see it.
Heerman's Gull at White Rock Pier (May 19, 2024).
On May 22, while scoping the mudflats from the end of Blackie Spit, I noticed three godwits across Mud Bay that wore a strikingly similar plumage to the three Bar-tailed Godwits that MEHA and I found at Brunswick Point two days earlier. Two birds had rich rufous underparts and one was quite pale, but they were more than 800 m away and details were difficult to discern. Eventually they made a short flight and those views confirmed that they were indeed Bar-tailed Godwits, likely the same ones. This spring proved to be exceptional for barwits in Metro Vancouver. They moved between Blackie Spit, Boundary Bay, and Brunswick Point, with eight at the latter representing an all-time high count for BC. My personal high was five at Blackie Spit on May 28, the same day as an American Avocet. Two avocets were found here by ROFO and PHWR on May 23, but were not seen again until my sighting, which was presumably of one of those two birds. In addition to the barwits, on May 22 I saw two Franklin’s Gulls and two Red Knots at Blackie Spit. On May 29, I saw a Turkey Vulture circling over King George Highway, which would be my only sighting of this species all year.
Bar-tailed Godwits at Blackie Spit (May 28, 2024). They were far.
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