Imagine you’re a bird in flight, high in the sky, heading from your wintering grounds in South America to the Boreal Forest, along with a dozen other birds. You make the journey every year because that forest is your breeding ground. Migration, built into your genes like the colour of …
March and April are always interesting months in our backyard. The calendar says Spring arrives, but Winter puts up quite a fight to stay around. The first of our Spring/Summer migrants have arrived, Red-winged Blackbirds and Grackles. We’ve been making sure the feeders are well stocked to help them out, as …
As I’m sure it’s been made clear by now, I absolutely love Frank Lake. I do a trip down there at least once a month, and in the spring it’s a very productive major staging area for gulls, waterfowl, and even prairie songbirds because the water around the lake opens …
The Pacific coast of British Columbia is home to two species of hummingbird, the Rufous (Selasphorus rufus) and the Anna’s (Calypte anna). Like many winter-weary Gabriolans, Rufous hummers spend the winter in Mexico. Then, in the spring, they begin their migratory journey northward, usually arriving back in BC during the …
It’s not often that one sees a once in a lifetime “life bird” like the citrine wagtail (Motacilla citreola) that showed up way back in November, 2012 alongside an unremarkable farm field road on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Found by local Comox Valley birder Dave Routledge, this second North American and …
Spectacular Snowy Owls are on the move! The owls are irrupting well south of their usual winter range in Canada, with reports as far south as Kansas. To read more about the phenomenon in eBird, select this link. If you don’t see a Snowy Owl in your birding ventures, you can …
Rarely – if ever – do I find myself speechless. Last weekend, I had purposely worked things out so that I had the whole of Sunday to write up a proposal. A proposal that should be done sooner than later. Everything was ticking along to according to plan, when I …
Greater white-fronted geese are mythical birds. A myth perpetrated by the oil industry so that some of us jump in our gas-driven cars and spend hours cruising through the country looking for them when they’re reported on the local bird alert. Again. This was intended to be a post about …
Bird Studies Canada’s Ron Ridout recently returned from Ontario’s southern James Bay coast where he was part of a team of researchers monitoring the use of the extensive tidal flats by several species of migrating shorebirds. During their southbound journey, large numbers of White-rumped, Semipalmated, Pectoral and Least sandpipers, Greater …