Chapter 6: June

The little woodlot next to the parking lot at Blackie Spit always struck me like it should be a migrant trap. The tall black cottonwoods, fringed by red alder and birch, create an island of habitat that is unlike its surroundings. I’ve often imagined some eastern warbler overshoot setting up a territory there – perhaps a Chestnut-sided Warbler as often happens in Metro Vancouver. But that had never happened, at least not until June 7^th of this year. 

As I entered the woodlot that morning, a rising buzzy trill in the background of the dawn chorus caught my attention. “Huh, that sounds like a Northern Parula” I thought. I managed a faint recording before it went quiet. I wandered about the woodlot back and forth but there was no further sign of the bird. There was a good push of late migrants with several other warbler species on the move as well as a singing Red-eyed Vireo, a SemiPen first for me. Then, exiting the woodlot on the east side, I could hear the suspected parula singing from the oaks at the corner of Dunsmuir and Gilley St., less than fifty meters from where the Oriental Turtle-Dove was first found. This time the bird was right in front of me, but again I failed to see it, and again after a few minutes it went quiet. But it had also switched its song type to another Northern Parula song type. At this point I was sure it was one, but still had not seen it. A Bullock’s Oriole distracted me briefly as it flew over chattering; another good SemiPen bird. After some fifteen minutes of silence, which felt like an eternity, I returned to the woodlot and to my relief, again heard the suspected parula singing from the birches near where I first heard it. This time I managed some brief glimpses, enough to confirm the identification, and put the word out. A handful of birders managed to see it that morning before it sang for the last time around 11 am. Remarkably this was not the first parula for the SemiPen; CAGI had found one at near-by Elgin Heritage Park on May 30, 2007. 

Northern Parula at Blackie Spit (June 7, 2024)

Throughout the remainder of June, I was pleased with multiple sightings of Black Swifts and Common Nighthawksover the SemiPen, the latter over my yard on a couple occasions. On the morning of June 25, I scoped from Kowmais Point. The water was glassy and the sun directly behind me, perfect conditions for picking out distant alcids on the water. I counted nineteen Rhinoceros Auklets, which are fairly reliable here in summer under the right conditions. I was more lucky to intercept two flying Pigeon Guillemots, which are a tough bird to find on the SemiPen. The auklet was my 180^th year bird, meaning I had reached my modest target halfway through the year. Two hundred began to feel like a feasible, but still distant, possibility.