Phoetos: Shots of Victoria's First Eastern Phoebe

After a great morning of birding, I stopped in at the abandoned Aquattro development lot to see if the Eastern Phoebe was still around.  The phoebe, to my knowledge, had not been reported since March 12 but I figured the effort dropped off the chart after most people saw the bird.  After spending 15 minutes looking at the usual suspects, I heard the phoebe's distinctive "chip" call coming from the edge of the main pond.  My eyes traced the edge of the pond, looking in the low vegetation for the source of the call.  It took just a few seconds to spy a plain-chested bird sitting low in an alder over the water.

Unlike my last encounter with the Eastern Phoebe, I was able to watch this bird at leisure for around half an hour as it moved around the pond, then traveled along the stream to the west before moving on to the western ponds.  Getting photos was a challenge, but I managed some shots that are pretty good.  I am glad Victoria's first documented Eastern Phoebe appears to be in good health and is actively hawking insects more than three weeks after news first broke about this bird.

Eastern Phoebe on March 22, 2014 at the abandoned Aquattro lot near Esquimalt Lagoon

Eastern Phoebe on March 22, 2014 at the abandoned Aquattro lot near Esquimalt Lagoon

Eastern Phoebe on March 22, 2014 at the abandoned Aquattro lot near Esquimalt Lagoon

Eastern Phoebe on March 22, 2014 at the abandoned Aquattro lot near Esquimalt Lagoon

Eastern Phoebe on March 22, 2014 at the abandoned Aquattro lot near Esquimalt Lagoon

Canada's First Orange-flanked Bush-Robin

That was my attempt to confuse and delight your senses... did it work?  Orange-flanked Bush-Robin is another name for a wee Asian flycatcher many British Columbia birders are now familiar with: the Red-Flanked Bluetail (Tarsiger cyanurus).

On January 13, 2013, a birder by the name of Colin McKenzie visited Queens Park in New Westminster and saw a bird that had him drawing a blank.  He studied the bird and jotted down some detailed notes and passed the information on to George Clulow and Mike Toochin.  I am not sure what exactly the notes said, but I envision it being something along these lines: "Small brown-backed bird with red flanks and a blue tail." Regardless of what his notes actually said, it was enough to convince George and Mike that the bird in question was almost certainly a Red-flanked Bluetail.  I follow sightings in North America close enough to know this species has turned up on islands off California, including one just over a year ago on San Clemente Island.  Every time something of that magnitude turns up in California, I wonder if it had to pass by British Columbia or whether they sneak by hundreds of kilometres offshore.  Either way, I always hoped an Asian flycatcher would be turned up in British Columbia some day.  Well... it happened!

My first chance to try for the mega rarity was January 19, but the Brothers Kimm - Jeremy and Jason - put the invite out to head out on the 20th instead.  I accepted and contacted my good friend, Tom Plath, to see if he would be up for picking up three wishful birders at the ferry terminal.  Tom was more than happy to oblige, which was great because I have very poor navigational skills on the Lower Mainland.  Our plan was set then - Jason would head down from Duncan, pick us up, and we'd walk on the ferry and meet Tom on the other side.  A minor hitch the morning of the twitch day came in the form of Jeremy K.'s car rolling up to my place and no sign of Jason.  Apparently Jason forgot to set his alarm and woke up around the time he was supposed to be at his brother's place.  Jeremy K. wasn't about to let the day go to waste, especially when we had a ride waiting for us on the other side, so he took matters into his own hands.  We booked it to the ferry terminal and Jason decided he would still try to make it in time.  I am not sure how he did it, but he managed to be the second-to-last walk-on passenger on the ferry.  Crisis and guilt averted!

Tom was waiting for at the Tsawwassen terminal and he was in good form.  He got us down to Queens Park in good time and it was one of those anticlimactic twitches where there is minimal work required to find the target.  The paparazzi was on the scene as expected, but it didn't seem like anyone was intently staring at the bird when we arrived.  Within a couple minutes of assessing the area, I saw a bird fly in and land at the top of a low perch.  I saw a few Red-flanked Bluetails on my trip to Thailand and this bird brought in a flood of memories.  The bird was sporting a warm brown back, orange-red flanks, a blue tail that varied in vibrancy depending on the light, a prominent white eyering, and a dingy brown wash the upper chest that was contrasted by its white throat.

The morning light and slight fog created a rather ethereal setting for the Red-flanked Bluetail.

After our entire group had great looks at the bird, we relaxed and spent the next couple hours casually watching the bird, chatting with fellow birders, taking some photos, and shaking our heads at the shuffling, bumbling photo mob.  Publicity for birds is a bit of a double-edged sword and the Red-flanked Bluetail was a great example.  One one hand, many people learned about this rare bird and were interested in catching a glimpse.  This brings about a greater awareness and appreciation for wildlife.  The flip side of the coin is the inexperienced masses coming out to catch a glimpse of this Asian vagrant and maybe even get a photo.  The end result is a bird that has to work a little harder to stay alive because it is continually flushed by people getting a little too close.  Luckily this bird seemid quite adept at foraging and the coldest snap of the winter is likely behind us.

I know the whole twitching thing is not for everyone, but it's pretty cool to go see a bird that you'll almost certainly never see on Canadian soil again in your lifetime!  I'll wrap this up with a big thanks again to Tom for being the commander-in-chief and Jason and Jeremy K. for being two good twitching buddies.  The perfect recipe for a good twitch is seeing the target bird and having good company!  A few more pictures of this beauty should be a nice way to finish off this post.

The Red-flanked Bluetail stayed in the shadows for the most part, which made getting nice photos very tricky.  Although not the crispest photo, this shows off the namesake blue tail perfectly.

Ooooh... look at that red flank!

This photo shows off that contrasting white throat nicely - great bird!

Citrine Wagtail Twitch!

Citrine Wagtail (Motacilla citreola) had only knowingly graced North American soil once before November 14th, 2012.  The first record was a mind-boggling two-day affair from Starkville, Mississippi just over 20 years ago.  On the 14th, Dave and Adele Routledge decided to check the birds down a seemingly random farm road in the Comox Valley.  The whole Comox Valley looks great for birding, with the Courtenay River Estuary being one of the most obvious features.  Why Dave and Adele chose to head to the other side of Comox Rd. that day and head down that dirt lane is a mystery, but they were amply rewarded for thinking outside the box!  Having experienced Yellow Wagtail some 50 years ago back in England, Dave knew he was looking at a wagtail when he found an unusual grey-and-white bird bobbing its tail.  He made several keen observations and presumed it was a Yellow Wagtail.  The description left no doubt that he had observed a wagtail, but no diagnostic features that separated it from other wagtails were mentioned.  I felt obliged to inquire why he thought it was a Yellow - an Eastern Yellow Wagtail (M. tschutschensis) to be precise with modern taxonomy - and not one of other potential options.  I mentioned Grey Wagtail (M. cinerea) and White Wagtail (M. alba) as other likely candidates to show up, but didn't even think of adding Citrine to the mix as it had never been recorded in Alaska.

Dave decided he had better go back out and go over the identification in greater detail.  Amazingly, he returned to the wagtail's original location two days later and managed to relocate it.  After longer looks in better light, the identification shifted towards the White Wagtail camp based on the more plain-faced appearance, grey back, two broad white wing bars, and white forehead.  The feature that didn't add up for White, though, was the lack of any kind of black markings on the chest.  At this point, no photos had been taken but the shifted identification and up-to-date sighting put a handful of birders into action the next day.  Mike Bentley was one of the few that made the journey and he came prepared with his camera and finally the bird was documented!  Once the photos were posted to BCVIBIRDS, the real excitement began.  Word soon spread that this looked like a classic 1st-winter Citrine Wagtail.  I grabbed my Birds of East Asia field guide, thumbed through to the wagtails, and could immediately tell why I couldn't come to grips with the bird being one of three more expected wagtail species.  CITRINE... expletive deleted... WAGTAIL!

Luckily I had already made travel arrangements to go up and see the wagtail.  Jeremy Kimm and I had just attempted a big day on Saturday and decided rest was for the weak.  He was a real trooper and picked me up at 5 a.m. even though I was the wrong direction.  We picked up his brother, Jason, in Duncan on the way up to the Comox Valley and the three of us were on location just after 8:30 a.m.  I rarely make my way up to the Comox Valley, so I was able to put some unfamiliar faces to familiar names as Dave Robinson, Art Martell, and Terry Thormin were there scouring the area for the wagtail.  Additionally, one familiar-yet-enigmatic face was in attendance as Keith Taylor had made the drive up the night before to be there for first light, and Mike Yip was sporting the long lens in hopes of getting some primo documentation.  They informed us they had not yet located the wagtail.  That all changed five minutes later when Art scanned around edge of the southwest corner of the field.  I was right alongside Art when he exclaimed "There it is!"  He notified the others and soon we were all taking in full frame views of the bird in our scopes!

The field marks were all there for a 1st-winter Citrine Wagtail: white completely framing its grizzled auriculars, a clean grey back with no hints of olive or brown, white supercilia connected by white over the bill, immaculate white undertail coverts, and two bold, white wing bars.

The next task was to get some photos to document the bird.  After all, we were dealing with a first Canadian and second confirmed North American record.  The bird was quite cooperative and everyone was very respectful of the bird's space, knowing that birders from the Lower Mainland were on their way.  Eventually I managed to get some decent shots when the Citrine Wagtail was at its closest.  I even took some poor footage of the bird to document its call.  Later we were joined by a half-dozen or more Lower Mainland birders that made the ferry trip over and, needless to say, they were happy twitchers!  I don't think I need any more commentary on this amazing bird, but I will close this out with a big congratulations to Dave and Adele Routledge for their amazing find!

Giant crowd... from a British Columbia perspective!

My recording was sent to Brent Beach and Ian Cruickshank to try to enhance its quality.  Ian kindly put the recording up on xeno-canto and I managed to figure out how to embed it here:


The above recording has a bland X-ray style sonogram, but you can enjoy Ian's Amazing Technicolor Dream Sonogram below:

Jeremy and the Golden Thrasher

This is destined to become a tale of legend not unlike Jason and the Golden Fleece.  Actually, none of my adventures are destined to work their way into local folklore.  They will almost certainly just fade into the internet ether.  Enough of that depressive musing about not having a legacy... rare bird story time!

I was doing some work in the Bush Arm of Kinbasket Lake, northwest of Golden, when I encountered a bird a little off course.  In the spring, Sage Thrashers can turn up just about anywhere.  Anywhere can be the middle of nowhere and that's exactly where I was!  While doing surveys on May 18th, my co-worker said "What's that?", pointing at a tan-coloured bird approximately 50 metres away.  I shot up my binoculars and caught a quick glimpse of the bird hopping up to the base of a cedar stump, cocking its tail once and then vanishing under the stump.  I was thoroughly intrigued so I dashed over to further investigate.  As I swiftly walked towards the mystery bird, two American Pipits flushed up and made me wonder if my sanity was in check.  That wouldn't make sense for what I saw!  The bird then popped out on the other side of the stump and for a split second I thought it was a female Mountain Bluebird because I wasn't ready for such a rarity. My binoculars went up and my jaw went down... a Sage Thrasher had wandered up the Rocky Mountain Trench and ended up right in front of me!

This Sage Thrasher (Oreoscoptes montanus) definitely looked out of
place running from cedar stump to cedar stump like a roadrunner!

I have only seen Sage Thrashers in B.C. a handful of times within their very restricted breeding range.  I have seen them once or twice on Nighthawk Rd. (west of Osoyoos), once or twice at White Lake (southwest of Okanagan Falls), and once on Anarchist Mountain (east of Osoyoos).  The advantage of seeing them in a very open landscape is obvious - I was able to watch the thrasher running across open patches!  I have heard of other species of thrashers doing this, such as LeConte's and Crissal, but I didn't know Sage Thrashers did it.  It was very cool to watch.  It would raise its tail and take long strides as it scurried through the open, which seemed almost roadrunner-like.

I have been fairly lucky the last few years with rare birds found during work.  In 2009, I serendipitously found a singing Northern Parula and followed it up with a male Chestnut-collared Longspur a couple days later while working south of Nakusp.  The next year, once again working south of Nakusp, I had a Red Phalarope in the fall which is an excellent bird to find away from the coast.  With a Sage Thrasher already under my belt for 2012, it's hard not to be optimistic about the prospects of another exciting find!  As it stands, I feel I can run off the seratonin from the thrasher sighting if nothing else materializes this year!

Stilt-A-Whirl

That's the wild ride that is sweeping the Pacific Northwest!  We are currently experiencing something extraordinary in Victoria on our flats and I was fortunate enough to witness it over the past couple of days.

Yesterday (April 24), I finished up some local field work and when I got home I checked if there were any sightings of interest.  My jaw dropped when I saw a pair of Black-necked Stilts (Himantopus mexicanus) were found by Mary Robichaud at Panama Flats.  I called up Jeremy Kimm and asked if he would be willing swing by and get me because Janean was at work.  He didn't put up much of a fight and half-an-hour or so later I was at Panama Flats.  It was almost anticlimactic because a chase usually entails a bit of a search.  When we got out to the edge of the southwest corner of Panama Flats, Ann Nightingale and Marilyn Lambert were casually watching the pair of stilts.  I raised my binoculars and there they were.  That's always the desired result, but I still like to work for a bird a little!

I always get a kick out of Black-necked Stilts' comically long, bubblegum pink legs

Black-necked Stilts had only been recorded in Victoria three times prior to this event, and the window they turn up in is quite narrow.  It seems the last week of April is prime stilt time here. I had never seen a Black-necked Stilt in Victoria so I really wanted see them and put myself one notch closer to my goal of 300 species in the local checklist area.  Once my eyes locked on to the stilts, I inched closer by moving up to 286 species.

You would think it ends there, but there's more.  I talked to my dad when I got home today (April 25) and we decided to go for a quick outing before dinner.  We ended up at Maber Flats because I was thoroughly impressed with the way the southern field looked for shorebirds when I visited last weekend.  When we got to the marsh edge, I scanned out and saw what appeared to be stilts.  I put them in the scope and indeed they were!  We were very excited and I speculated that the pair we were looking at might be the same set from Panama Flats because one had a pinkish wash to the chest and the other lacked it.  But what was at the back of the flats - two more tall, black-and-white shorebirds?  I looked at one pair of stilts and immediately panned back to the other just to see if I missed the first pair quickly relocating.  Nope.  Four Black-necked Stilts in one area!

With a whole slew of southern interior birds turning up in the Pacific Northwest, I wonder what else is waiting to be turned up?  So far we've had: Lewis' Woodpecker, a handful of Yellow-headed Blackbirds, a Western Kingbird, three Long-billed Curlews, and, in Vancouver, a male Calliope Hummingbird.  Hopefully the stellar cast continues over the next couple weeks!