Ocean Waves Pay Dividends

Now that I'm thankfully back in the routine of working during the week, my birding has, unfortunately, taken something of a back seat.
On the plus side, my new employers are located in the City of Langford, and the building is right next to Langford Lake. So, I've managed a couple of exploratory lunch breaks checking out this spot. As yet, I haven't seen much to get excited about, but the habitat looks very promising. The birds that I have seen include: lesser scaup, common loon, American coot, Townsend's warbler, ruby-crowned kinglet, osprey, bald eagle and such relatively common stuff. On Friday, there was even a 30ish strong flock of pine siskin flying around the area. Be interesting to see what I can turn up in the coming weeks and months...
Having completed my first week with FTS, I got home on Friday and managed to squeeze in a swift visit to the Government House grounds.

There were reasonable numbers of birds about, the most notable being an influx of ruby-crowned kinglet. They were all over the place! Good numbers of yellow-rumped warblers were seen and heard, but I couldn't find any other warbler species. At least 5 hermit thrush were present, and fox sparrow numbers seem to have increased. A single Lincoln's sparrow was found, and an impressive flock of feeding golden-crowned sparrows and dark-eyed juncos totalled around 60 birds.I also came across the first band-tailed pigeons that I have seen in the grounds (pictured).

All At Sea

Bait-ball Action!

On Saturday I joined the VNHS (Victoria Natural History Society) pelagic out of Victoria, to Race Rocks off the coast of Sooke.
We were out for around 5 hours and we hit into some pretty good birds.
Gull species were well accounted for, mainly thanks to a couple of sizable bait-balls attracting throngs of the garrulous birds. Thayer's, glaucous-winged, mew, Heermann's, California, western and Bonaparte's were all present.

Mew Gull

Alcids too were thick on the surface with many 100s of common murres, reasonable numbers of rhinoceros auklet, a few pigeon guilemots and best of all - up 8 ancient murrelet.
Now, here was the first lifer I've had in ages. For a reason I can't even begin to remember, I didn't twitch the Lundy (Devon, UK) one back in the early 90s so this species has been very high on my 'wants' list for some time...

Ancient murrelets

The first pair were picked up very close to the boat, and allowed for great views. By the time I reached for my camera however (well, I really wanted to have a good look at the pretty little enigmas), they'd dived, and resurfaced some distance away. Hence the crappy photo here.
Red-necked phalaropes and phalarope sp. were seen frequently, as were a few Pacific loons, and Ian Cruikshank picked up a lovely fork-tailed storm petrel as it rose from the water's surface just ahead of the boat. We got excellent views, albeit rather briefly, as it took off and flew just off the bow, and headed away.
We could see large kettles of turkey vultures soaring around the Beechey Head area, and among them several red-tailed hawks, plus sharp-shined hawks, an osprey and other unidentified raptors (not easy to be thorough when you're trying to go through 100s of vultures, at distance, on a boat...!).

As we arrived back in the harbour mouth on our return we spotted a common tern sat on a piece of driftwood. Once very common passage birds in this area, today they are quite a rarity in Victoria's waters and the bird was a very fitting end to an excellent day's birding.
Well worth the trip, I may well do another soon!
 
     

Sooke Seabirds Start Slowly

Today, it was all about seabirds. A mini-pelagic trip had been organised out of Sooke - the plan being to head out to the US border, and cruise along seeing what we could find out there. As we arrived in Sooke around 7.30am it was apparent that, despite the lovely morning we'd left behind in Victoria, things were a little different here... The Fog had descended.
Unperturbed by this potential climactic calamity, I and the other 10 optimistic birders jumped willingly into the Zodiac, resplendent in our lovely survival suits.
About an hour later, we were damp,  2 miles from land and somewhat less enthusiastic. Then it happened. A bird appeared (in fairness, we had powered past many rhinoceros auklets and common murres, but they're dross under these circumstances). A red-necked phalarope. Hoorah!

Tufted puffin

Minutes later, another bird appeared but this was one of those 'must-haves' among Pacific seabirds, a magnificent summer plumage tufted puffin. A sense of palpable relief settled over the boat.
(The pic here was taken, by Rich Mooney, on my last pelagic trip out of Tofino).

Before long, visibility had improved dramatically and we were able to spot gull-infested bait-balls in the near distance. As we sped toward the feeding mass of larids and attendant alcids a pair of jaegers (skuas, for those back in Blighty) came into view. Large, hefty, barrel-chested birds, they had to be pomarine jaegars and as one turned, it showed full tail spoons. The other bird had no tail streamers, but given its shape, size and flight action, it too was almost certainly the same species. 
We later encountered another fine adult complete with intact tail, and it showed beautifully as it flew across the bow of the boat.
A small feeding flock of around 10 or so dainty Bonaparte's gulls put in an appearance, too.
Before heading back to dock, we came across many more phalaropes, common murres, rhino auklets, California and glaucous-winged gulls as well as seals and sealions, but unfortunately no cetaceans.
A big thanks to Jeremy Kimm for arranging this mini-pelagic.

Ruff Justice

Once we had gathered our land-legs, a bunch of us headed for Witty's Lagoon where a red-necked stint and ruff had both been found yesterday. Both rare birds in this part of the world, the stint was a potential world tick for me... while, of course, ruff is a common species back in the UK.

Juvenile Ruff - Witty's lagoon, Victoria

We scanned through large numbers of western and least sandpipers, finding only a lone pectoral among them. As I checked out the pair of short-billed dowitchers that Ian Cruikshank had picked up on the far shore a little earlier I noticed the ruff feeding close by.
Eventually, we headed round and got excellent views and record shots of the ruff using my 'scope and Aziza Cooper's camera, (I'd left mine in the car, doh!) but it was scant compensation for not being able to relocate the stint...
A 1st winter ring-billed gull was waddling around on the mud, giving me satisfactory confirmation regarding the identity of the Clover Point bird from a couple of days ago (see the post below).

Long weekend

Well, dear readers, I feel I must apologise for the lack of posts in recent days. I'm sure you're all devastated.
So, what have been up to?
Early Friday morning, my chum Adrian and I headed down for a trawl around the Nanaimo River estuary and Holden Creek. Highlights included a cracking drake blue-winged teal (my first here & a year tick), northern harrier, American goldfinch and the usual stuff at the estuary. We stopped at the marshy area on Gordon Rd and had two fab black-headed grosbeak (another year-tick) and common yellowthroat.
At Holden there were 3 dowitchers out on the marsh. Our perception was that they were 2 short-billed and 1 long-billed but I'd hate to put money on it! The 2 appeared paler bellied, and slightly smaller and shorter-billed than the darker bird. Silent dowitchers make me very unhappy..! Three spotted sandpiper were present.

Later we set off for a long weekend in Sooke. To cut a long story short, we did plenty of hiking and what-not, but the birds weren't terribly forthcoming. Adrian was pleased to see immaculate harlequins (having only seen one previously, a female on the Isle Of Lewis) and was chuffed when we went trundling into the forest to find the cause of a 'pinking' robin - a barred owl (pictured). Other stuff included rhinoceros auklet, pigeon guillemot, osprey, merlin, Wilson's warbler, etc etc...
To be honest, the table-football, food, company and cottage at Anderson Cove were enough to compensate for the lack of rare vagrants and seabirds. And we enjoyed the pot-holes.
On the way back we stopped at Swan Lake. Ridiculously, this was my first visit to this brilliant site. We had a quick look and got ace views of yellow warblers, Anna's hummer and a pair of purple martins. And I've never had as good views of marsh wren!
I met up with Chris Saunders to collect vols 1&2 of Birds of BC (cheers Chris!). Pity we didn't have time to join him for a spot of birding at Swan Lake, but 18 month old Isobella had set the agenda and we had to get back to Nanaimo...

Monday evening -  a quick visit to Holden with Jenny after work and there were four spotted sandpipers now present, plus 7 least sandpiper but little else of note. Later, Adrian and I had a look at Quennell Lake. Despite the northern lake area being all mud and shallow pools now, there were no waders to be seen. Looks promising though... A red-necked grebe was on the 'mid' lake, and 5 wood duck were near the northern end.