Better Lake, Than Never

The Bridge at Swan Lake, Victoria

As far as many birders are concerned, the pace slows down quite a bit around this time of year. The majority of birds are busy with breeding duties, and other than the early movements of failed or non-breeders, the avian landscape changes relatively little from day to day. Of course, there's lots to observe and record in the way of nesting birds and such, but there's not much to get excited about as far as passage is concerned. This will all change soon enough, as the first shorebirds will start to appear, as they depart their Arctic breeding grounds and commence their journeys south.

In the meantime, it's usually a good time to get out and look for butterflies and dragonflies. Warm sunny days are best (not too many of those yet this year...) and better still, you don't have to get up particularly early to look for them!
With this in mind, I thought I'd go for walk around Swan Lake yesterday. I'd only been once before, briefly, just over a year ago and as I am currently a resident of the fair city of Victoria, I thought it was about time I reacquainted myself with this impressive reserve.
Unfortunately, the day was cooler than I'd hoped and somewhat overcast, with a few sunny spells here and there. Hence the target insects were all but absent.
Nonetheless, I walked the perimeter of the site for the first time and still saw some nice enough birds. Always a treat for a Brit birder, cedar waxwings were all around the reserve and are guaranteed to brighten any day. Better still was a lovely, singing black-headed grosbeak, the first I've seen this year. Yellow warbler, common yellowthroat, red-winged blackbird and other common species provided with me with plenty to look at on the way round.

They're geese. They're in Canada. They must be Canada geese.

The lake itself was very quiet, with just Canada geese and mallards present.
As I neared the end of my trail around the reserve I bumped into Chris Saunders, so we stopped and had a chat and did a bit of birding. While we were talking, a series of dark, foreboding clouds gathered and brought with them, as one would hope, swifts. First we picked up a couple of Vaux's swift, and soon noticed several black swifts as they moved through. Very nice. Also, while we were in the car park a young Cooper's hawk came by, upsetting the local robins, and a peregrine sailed over.
I'll make a point of getting up to this wonderful site more often, especially as autumn approaches and the birding really picks up again.

This morning (Sunday) I took a trundle around the Government House grounds, once again with butterflies on my mind. Sadly, other than a few tatty whites it was bereft of anything interesting. Birds-wise, the bushtits were extremely active, and one large feeding flock included some very recently fledged birds. It was great to see the 'extended' family members helping out with the feeding of these youngsters.
I walked on down to the waterfront and as I made my way along the pebble beach at Ross Bay I noticed a dark duck close offshore. I was somewhat surprised, once I got my bins on it, to see a very unseasonal drake black scoter. Its presence somewhat undermined my 'birding's crap at this time of year' theory... Also on the water were the more expected pigeon guillemots and rhinoceros auklets.    

That Was The Week That Was

Blogger's been ill, so I haven't been able to post until now. So, if you're sitting comfortably, I'll begin...
 
This morning, it was fairly quiet down at Government House with nothing to indicate any birds new in. What was presumably a remnant of yesterday's fall; 12 yellow-rumped warbler, 1 Townsend's warbler and a warbling vireo were moving around in a single feeding flock, and a single Lincoln's sparrow emerged to check out my pishing but that was about it.

Thursday Fall

A bit of a fall was evident early Thursday morning in the grounds of Government House, Victoria.
It seemed pretty quiet until I jammed into a flock of around 30 yellow-rumped warblers feeding high up in some garry oaks, along the lower path. Scanning through I came across 6 Townsend's warblers, 2 ruby-crowned kinglet and a Wilson's warbler. An empidonax flycatcher showed briefly but flew off, silently.
As I moved along the path, a Cooper’s hawk came bombing along and just missed my head.
The distinctive clucking of a hermit thrush was emanating from the understory, and a little persuasive pishing lured it out, but nothing else.
I came across another active warbler flock, this time comprising around 10 yellow-rumped and 2 Townsend's along with a warbling vireo (my first of the year).
Then I noticed a smart olive-sided flycatcher (another year-tick) sallying from a snag.
I decided to gain some height, to check the tree tops and went to the small ‘balcony’ outlook where I was surprised to come eye to eye with a varied thrush.
The olive-sided was visible from here too, and gave better views but there was nothing in the upper branches of the trees.
On the eastern bluffs I saw another olive-sided flycatcher, but otherwise there was little activity there so I headed home for breakfast.

Wednesday Whirlwind

On Wednesday afternoon I had the pleasure of being given something of a guide tour of Victoria and Saanich Peninsula birding hotspots by Ian Cruickshank.
We started off at Panama Flats where, thanks the persistent downpour, the flooded fields were swarming with 100s of hirundines, including a few cliff swallows and one or two northern rough-winged swallows, plus good numbers of Vaux’s swifts (year tick).
Scanning the muddy fringes we noticed a congregation of feeding dowitchers, and a few least sandpipers.
Three spotted sandpiper (year tick) were also working the edges and common dabbling ducks punctuated the water’s surface including several shoveler and a pair of gadwall.

Among other places we visited included Observatory Hill - an impressive spot affording immaculate views. Here we added such things as chipping sparrow, Pacific-slope flycatcher (YT), American goldfinch and house wren (YT).
We came across dowitchers, mostly looking like long-billeds, at several sites including a group of just over 100 at 'Red Barn Flats'. This interesting site, (so named for its location right by, yep, you guessed it - a red barn, well the Red Barn Country Market more precisely.. ) was also teeming with swallows.

A stop at Maber Flats proved interesting with a breeding plumage black-bellied plover, more dowitchers and 18 purple martin (2 of which, pictured).
A flock of 40 cackling geese dropped in and a single greater white-fronted goose made an unexpected appearance.
Along the path, the hedgerow was jumping with YR warblers and I finally caught sight of my first yellow warbler of the year.

Later, we had a brief check of the Martindale area where the highlight was an adult female northern harrier.

After a quick stop at Island View Beach where we watched a Caspian tern fishing, we headed back.
It was great to be in the company of someone who knows not only the area, but the birds so well.
Ian's incredibly acute hearing, and ability to ID everything that calls, was a grim reminder that my battle-worn ears are well and truly past their sell-by date.
Add to that, my relative lack of familiarity with the region's birds' vocalisations and it's fairly obvious that I could be missing a not inconsiderable percentage of passerines while out birding. Oh well, at least my eyesight's still 20/20. For now...
Thanks again to Ian for his enthusiasm, and generous welcome to Victoria's birding scene!

Water, water everywhere...

Blimey, the water levels were really high at Holden Creek this evening. As I was there the tide continued to bring water in until it resembled not so much as creek, as a lake.
Anyhoo - I expect that a couple of pairs of spotted sandpiper will have lost eggs. I guess it's early enough for them to re-lay, if that is the case.
At least 2 pairs seem to have established their nests out of harms reach, as regards flooding.
There weren't any other waders in evidence - just goes to show that frequent coverage is essential as regards spring passage birds. The dowitchers, semi-palmated plovers and pectoral sandpipers, that I've seen, have all been one-dayers. Makes one wonder what was there, on the days no-one checked! That's the kind of thinking that can keep me awake at night!
A female purple martin briefly joined the other swallow species to make a full suite of hirundines and as I was leaving a handful of black swifts came in with a single Vaux's among them. As I watched them, the sky practically filled with swifts until there were approximately 80 blacks swirling around. I'd always just thought of black swifts as being pretty much the nearctic version of European common swift, but the more I see of them the more apparent it is that they are strikingly different in so many ways.  
 

Early birder swiftly does it

Squeezed a quick half hour down at the estuary this morning on my way to work. Seemed quite birdy with a few seemingly new yellow warblers around and a couple of spotted sandpiper on the river.
Couldn't find anything too exciting, unfortunately, but just as I was about to leave a single Vaux's swift came over and spent around 30 seconds flitting around close by and giving great views. Last time I saw one of these in BC was back in '92 or '93, or whenever it was I first visited Vancouver Island...

Later, in the evening, Mr Dawson and I headed down to Cable Bay Trail to follow up on a Cassin's vireo nest that he had found earlier in the day. While we were there, a barred owl was betrayed by 'pinking' robins and we heard several, and saw one, Swainson's thrush.