Birding: Hard, Easy, or Something Else?

Ted Floyd, Editor of Birding Magazine, recently wrote an article called Birding is Easy and Hard (http://blog.aba.org/2016/03/birding-is-easy-and-hard.html). It was inspired in part by two earlier blog posts of Greg Neise, who’d come down on both sides of the argument at different times. Floyd took up the challenge of clarifying the seeming …

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Christmas Birding in the Comox Valley

For the second time in four years, I spent Christmas of 2013 on Vancouver Island, and had some good opportunities to do some bird photography while I was there. The Comox valley is situated on Vancouver Island’s east side, on the Strait of Georgia, about 100 kilometers northwest of Nanaimo, …

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Meet the Kinglets

Golden-crowned Kinglet (Regulus satrapa)

One of the benefits of teaching at a rural school on Vancouver Island is the daily lunch time walks. The country roads are bordered with hedgerows and there is usually good birding. I always keep an eye open for unusual birds birds and every now and then something turns up. …

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Pacific Pelagic Birding with Wild Research

Last Sunday, September 15, I took my first pelagic birding trip. The trip left port at Ucluelet, British Columbia, and is an annual trip organized as a fundraiser for Wild Research, based out of Vancouver. Traditionally, the trip heads out from port at 7:00 am and heads southwest for three …

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Citrine Wagtail Continues in the Comox Valley

Citrine Wagtail - George Bowron

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 …

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