Chapter 2: February

I tried to conjure up a Pygmy Nuthatch at Alderwood Park a few more times while there was still insufficient daylight to venture father afield before or after work, but it was not to be. A Red-breasted Sapsucker working its wells on the same pine trees offered some consolation. They can be a tricky bird to catch up to on the SemiPen some winters. For good measure, I also tried twice more for Black-crowned Night Heron and Rusty Blackbird at Nicomekl Portage Park, dipping on both. 

Red-breasted Sapsucker not on a pine tree at Kwomais Point (February 4, 2024). 

Winter is the season for gulls and Metro Vancouver offers some of the worst gulling in North America! I have several reasons for this contentious claim: 

(1) We are in the heart of the Glaucous-winged x Western Gull hybrid zone. Up to 75% of some Western and Glaucous-winged Gull colonies in Washington comprise hybrids¹, which is likely representative of the gull scene around Metro Vancouver. The range of phenotypes shown by these hybrids and their back-crosses make identification problematic. 

(2) There are so many Glaucous-winged and Olympic Gulls that other large Larids constitute <1% of any flock. Actually, 1% might be generous and 0.1% might be more typical. 

(3) There are no locations where large gull flocks can be reliably observed at close range. Most gulls gather in large, densely packed flocks in the middle of fields around the Delta landfill or way out on the mudflats of Boundary Bay, where viewing conditions, for lack of a better word, suck. 

The SemiPen is no exception to terrible gulling. In fact, finding a pure American Herring Gull can be challenging. There are no fields on the SemiPen, so gulling must be done at the beach. The best gull spot is the mouth of the Campbell River, where gulls sometimes gather in modest numbers to loaf and bathe during evening low tides. My first gulling attempt here produced a single Iceland Gull, but not the hoped for American Herring or Western Gulls.

The best and most unexpected bird in February was a calling Barn Owl flying over my neighboorhood on the rainy night of the 4th. A crummy recording of that bird can be listened to here. 

¹ Howell, SNG and Dunn, J. 2007. Gulls of the Americas. Boston, NY: Hougton Mifflin Company.

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. 

The End

Here it is. The highly averted final blog post.

Total Species Count

In 2015, 265 species were reported to eBird from Metro Vancouver County, which is fairly consistent with the five year average of 264 (σ=1.73). I also made note of any additional rarities that were not reported to eBird, which included the following 12 species:

White-faced Ibis – Sep 11 at Reifel

Willet – Aug 10 at Boundary Bay

Little Stint – Aug 8 at Boundary Bay

Forster’s Tern – May 27 at White Rock Beach

Costa’s Hummingbird – May 3 in Burnaby

Calliope Hummingbird – Aug 16-17 in Coquitlam

Yellow-bellied Sapscuker – March 9 in Southlands

Prairie Falcon – Jan 12 in Pitt Meadows

Black-and-white Warbler – Dec 18 at Nitobe Memorial Garden

Brewer’s Sparrow – Sep 16 at Iona

Indigo Bunting – Dec 20-25 in Port Coquitlam

Rose-breasted Grosbeak – May 27-28 in North Vancouver

There was also a Rock Wren at Pt. Roberts, which is outside the eBird Metro Vancouver County, but part of the official Vancouver checklist area. This brings the 2015 total to 279 species.

My year end total was 260 (93.19%) for the official Vancouver checklist area, and 258 (97.36%) for eBird Metro Vancouver County.  At the start of the year, I had said I was striving for 260-something, while realistically hoping to reach 250. I guess both goals were achieved.

Biggest Misses

There are two approaches to identifying my biggest miss: 1) the commonest bird that I should have seen but didn’t, and 2) the rarest bird that was reported that I didn’t see.

The following are my top contenders in category 1:

#3 Northern Goshawk. They aren’t always easy, but often at least one will settle for the winter at a location with a good food source somewhere in Vancouver. That did not happen during the winter of 2014/2015 or 2015/2016, although there were occasional reports.

#2 Willet. This is an underappreciated rarity in Vancouver because a few birds have repeatedly over-wintered at several locations for many consecutive years. Most recently, one to two have wintered at the White Rock pier during most winters from 2005 to 2014 (disappearing in November 2014), and as luck would have it did not return in 2015. Finding a Willet during migration is no easy feat, and this year’s only sighting was a one-tide wonder at Boundary Bay on August 10.

#1 Wandering Tattler. This is a species that is essentially annual in Metro Vancovuer and its occurrence is very localized and highly predictable: adults show up on the Iona south jetty from mid- to late-July, and juveniles from late-August to mid-September. The Iona south jetty receives almost daily coverage, including from one intrepid walker in particular who, leading up to 2015, has found tattlers on the south jetty for seven consecutive years. But 2015 was, disappointingly, a tattler-less year in Vancouver. Due to its general reliability and predictability I haven chosen Wandering Tattler as my biggest miss of 2015 in the “commonest” category.

The following are my top contenders in category 2:

#3 Little Stint. This bird was found by KELO on Aug 8 while I was only a few kilometers down the dyke.  I received prompt notification but got stuck behind a horse-drawn buggy, such that JORE made it from 96^th to 104^th on bike faster than I did by car. In this instance, speed was not a difference maker (but makes for a good story) since the stint was seen for seconds before the area was inundated by thousands of peeps. I searched for the remainder of that night, the following day, and the day after, but all to no avail.

#2 Indigo Bunting. Because it was present at a feeder for five days.

#1 Blue-gray Gnatcatcher. I missed this one simply because I did not act fast enough, and really had no reason not to. It was successfully twitched by a few first-responders before disappearing within hours. This was another KELO bird, and had he not found me a few others in 2015, he’d be quite unpopular with me.

Best Birds

Picking a best bird from my list is a bit of a struggle, not because there are so many rarities to choose from, but indeed the opposite. My list was largely built from an abundance of annual and semi-annual rarities. During a big year, they all count as 1, so getting a Vesper Sparrow is as important as getting the Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, even though I expect to see Vespers 3 years out of 5, and still have not caught a gnatcatcher locally. Having said that, here are my top picks:

#3 Ross’ Goose. Perhaps somewhat overdue, this was a Vancouver first for me.

#2 Hoary Redpoll. Based on rarity alone, this would take the top slot. This was the first photo-documented record for Vancouver.

#1 White-tailed Ptarmigan. It was the experience that bumped this to the top of my list: a pleasant winter hike with a good group of friends and unlikely odds of success that delivered the prize. Although ptarmigan are likely present on our north shore mountains during the winter a lot more often than they are reported, it still represents a fantastic year bird!

Closing Thoughts:

I would best describe a Vancouver big year as a tiring affair with fluctuating enjoyment. If done seriously, one has to be prepared to drop anything and twitch everything immediately, which becomes tiring even if the twitches are successful, which often they are not. Equally as tiring is having to look for birds you need but have not been reported based on their probability of occurrence at a given time of year. These are generally low success rate endeavors and I lost track of the number of hours spent sorting through gulls, scanning for Yellow-billed Loons and searching for other unlikely things when I wanted to simply go birding, or stay at home altogether.

Below I present my big year enjoyment curve overlaid with my species accumulation curve. Peaks in enjoyment are generally correlated with rapid species accumulation, successfully connecting with target birds or milestones. Troughs generally represent prolonged periods with no year birds, repeated dips or good birds being found while I was out of town.

Figure 1: Weekly big year enjoyment and species accumulation.

Finally, my big year would not have been nearly as enjoyable or successful without special contribution from several people to whom I owe special gratitude. First and foremost, MEHA for running the Vancouver bird alert and promptly sharing rare bird notifications, which contributed to a significant portion of my list. Secondly, the others alongside whom I pursued Vancouver Big Years of sorts (openly or in denial), namely MITO, MEHA, ROLY and GECL, thereby further motivating me to chase birds that I didn’t want to at times that were inconvenient. Thirdly, everyone who sent me updates and notices on my target birds; there are too many people to list, so: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ. Find your 4-letter code, this is your shout out! And finally, anyone and everyone who picked up their binos, pulled their socks up to their knees and went birding in 2015! I hope 2016 brings you a Siberian Accentor or something.

Happy New Year! The big year is officially over. I will make a final blog posting sometime in January summarizing the year. Stay tuned.

Things from the Great White North

December brought two year birds. Finding a Glaucous Gull on December 15 was a big sigh of relief after scanning countless gull flocks this winter and last. Rare, but annual, this is the first one I've heard of that anyone has turned up locally in 2015, and not for lack of looking. It was actually spotted by the vagrant AVBA before we even exited the vehicle. Some people have all the luck!

#259 - Glaucous Gull - December 15 - Ladner Trunk Rd & 88th St., Delta, BC

The next bird is, in my humble opinion, a contender for Vancouver Bird of the Year: Hoary Redpoll. The e-Fauna checklist of Rare Birds of Vancouver lists six hypothetical records of this species in Vancouver. So this one, found at Queen Elizabeth Park, may be the first photo documented record for the checklist area. To boot, the bird was extremely cooperative; feeding at eye level in the same few birch trees for at least five full days! 

#260 - Hoary Redpoll - December 21 - Queen Elizabeth Park, Vancouver, BC

The low-light of the month was having UBC campus security called on me while peering over the fence of the closed Nitobe Memorial Gardens in search of a Black-and-White Warbler. Fortunately , upon presentation of my pishing license, we were permitted to continue our unsuccessful search. I blame the whole incident on the two suspicious characters I was with, but I guess no Big Year is complete without a brush with the law, or something resembling it. 

Burrowing Owl at Sea Island

The discovery of a Burrowing Owl at Sea Island in November prompted the inevitable discussion regarding its origin. BC's wild Burrowing Owl population disappeared by about 1980 (Leupin and Low 2001) and the very small extant population is attributed largely to annual releases of captive-reared owls. I pursued some research about the BC Burrowing Owl Recovery Program, with specific interest in dispersal patterns and return rates in an attempt to, well, justify counting it. Over the course of my research I realized how little I knew about the Recovery Program, so decided to summarize a few items of interest here.

Mitchell et al. (2011) discuss some of the metrics I was looking for while comparing the success of two releases techniques: hard-released birds (i.e., those released directly in to the wild from artificial burrows) versus soft-released birds (i.e., those released in to an enclosure surrounding their artificial burrow prior to the wild).  Soft-releases appeared more successful with regard to site fidelity, breeding season survival, fledging rate, and ultimately population recruitment (Mitchell et al. 2011). I suspect soft-release techniques will (have?) gradually phase out hard-releases, and therefore will briefly summarize soft-release results only.

The soft release protocol is to place pairs of captive-reared yearling owls inside artificial burrows where they are held overnight before being released in to an enclosure, which is then removed after approximately two weeks. Released owls display high site fidelity, with 86% of released birds (n=140) from 2005 to 2007 staying following their release. During the same three year period, 69 adult pairs produced 168 fledglings, which had a 69% survival rate during a 40-day post fledging period based on a sample of radio-tracked juveniles. Typically, all owlets are captured inside artificial burrows and banded with a USFWS aluminum leg-band and a coloured alphanumeric leg-band when they are four weeks old. Only 5 of 71 (7%) fledglings from 2005 or 2006 returned in 2006 or 2007, resulting in a population recruitment of 0.17 offspring per soft-released pair. The return rate of released adults during the same period was 2% (1 of 62 adults). However, 28% of 'wild' adults (i.e., adults present prior to the annual release of captive-reared owls) returned again in the subsequent year (Mitchell et al. 2011).

Most adult and young owls leave their release sites by October, but there is little information regarding location of their wintering grounds (Mackintosh et al. 2004). One captive-reared owl wintered in Portland, Oregon in 2001 and again in 2002, and another in Port Townsend, WA in 2002 (Mackintosh et al. 2004). In the winter of 2013, a Burrowing Owl wintered in Tofino and another in Comox, but I do not recall if they were banded and whether their origin was determined.

(Aside: anyone interested in the Burrowing Owl Recovery Program and the associated challenges and successes of reintroduction efforts should check out the Burrowing Owl Conservation Society of BC web site).

The Sea Island bird was unbanded, which almost certainly eliminates the possibility of a released captive-reared bird because, presumably, none are missed during banding prior to release. Mitchell et al. (2011) mentions all owlets are banded at four weeks old, but it is uncertain whether the occurrence of unbanded birds at release sites indicates presence of wild birds or simply the progeny of released birds missed during previous banding efforts (Leupin 2004). This, coupled with (limited) knowledge of their dispersal patterns, a juvenile bird from a released captive-reared pair may be a possibility. 

Unlike many larger owls that moult their primaries and some other flight feathers over two or three cycles, Burrowing Owls have a complete pre-basic moult (Howell 2010), which unfortunately complicates ageing this bird relative to large owls that often have striking moult limits in their primaries. I noticed the primary tips looked quite worn and abraded on our owl, but is it too much wear for juvenal feathers? One wise guy quipped "of course they're worn, they live underground", which may be a valid point, but I haven't got enough experience with Burrowing Owls to confirm or deny. 

So, my conclusion: origin uncertain. And that's good enough for me! Every big year needs some controversial tick, and a Burrowing Owl in BC fits that niche quite nicely. 

#258 - Burrowing Owl - 22 Nov 2015 - Sea Island, Richmond, BC

References:

Howell, S. N. G. 2010. Molt in North American Birds. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, New York.

Leupin E. E. 2004. Burrowing Owl Athene cunicularia in Accounts and Measures for Managing Identified Wildlife - Southern Interior Forest Region V. 2004. BC Ministry of Water, Land and Air Protection. pp. 137-147

Leupin E. E. and D. J. Low. 2001. Burrowing owl reintroduction efforts in the Thomposn-Nicola Region of British Columbia. Journal of Raptor Research 35: 392-398.

Mackintosh, M., E. Leupin and D. Brodie. 2004. Burrowing Owls in B.C. - Science and Stewardship in Action. Proceedings of the Species at Risk 2004 Pathways to Recovery Conference, March 2-6, 2004, Victoria, BC.

Mitchell, A. M., T. I. Wellicome, D. Brodie and K. Cheng. 2011. Captive-reared burrowing owls show higher site-affinity, survival, and reproductive performance when reintroduced using a soft-release. Biological Conservation 144: 1382-1391.