Two Notches Up on the Victoria Checklist Area Belt

I was away for 11 weeks with work and visiting family in Ontario, but I am back in Victoria and have been trying to make up for lost birding time.  Luckily were are in the midst of what is shaping up to be an interesting fall.

With more than a week of work left in Fort McMurray, I received word that a Black-throated Sparrow was found at Whiffin Spit.  The sighting was quite unprecedented for the fall; all sightings of Black-throated Sparrow in the province have been from early May to early July.  In the Victoria checklist area, we have only two previous records:

1) June 18-19, 1992 at Somenos Marsh, found by Derrick Marven

2) June 16, 1994 at Mount Tolmie, found by Keith Taylor

I didn't chase many birds when I was young, so these records were not ones I capitalized on more than 20 years ago.  For more than a week I nervously watched BCVIBIRDS to see if the Black-throated Sparrow was still being seen.  I also watched the soap opera unfold of a rapidly growing tick on the sparrow's face.  Now I was hoping not only that the bird would stay, but also that the tick would be gone.  I got home on October 8th and could have immediately zipped out to Whiffin Spit, but I just wanted to do some relaxing birding.  The next day I apparently wanted more relaxing birding, so it wasn't until October 10th that I finally made my way out to Whiffin Spit.  I left fairly early and got out to Sooke before 8:30 a.m.  The most recent reports said the bird was right by the parking lot, so I basically hopped out and started looking.  The first bird I heard was a bit surprising: a Yellow Warbler was giving some sharp call notes as it fed in a maple at the edge of the parking lot.  They are pretty scarce once the calendar rolls over to October, but this was surprisingly the second I had seen in two days.

Drab fall Yellow Warbler blending in nicely with the changing Bigleaf Maple leaves

After checking out the Yellow Warbler, I turned my attention to searching for the Black-throated Sparrow.  It was an extremely anticlimactic event as I immediately found it in the short grass at the edge of the parking lot.  The sparrow was very cooperative and looked a little worse for wear.  The tick had fallen off a couple days earlier, but the feathers around the attachment site were all missing and there was an unsightly mark in its place.  I walked the rest of the spit, but couldn't drum up anything interesting.  By the time I finished my walk, I found another birder enjoying the Black-throated Sparrow.  I didn't recognize said birder, but was soon introduced to Neil Hughes who recently moved back to southern Vancouver Island from Powell River.  I'm always happy to meet new birders and learn the community has an extra set of skilled eyes in its midst.  We chatted for a while as the Black-throated Sparrow busily fed along the edge of the beach.  The bird was sometimes too obliging for our cameras, but certainly not for our eyes.  Despite the rather bedraggled condition of this rarity from southern aridlands, it was a treat to see one on southern Vancouver Island.

The scruffy little Black-throated Sparrow scored this tasty morsel while foraging around the rocks at the base of the beach

The next day, news of another exciting bird ended up in my e-mail: Cathy Carlson had a Brown Booby about three miles offshore from Beechey Head in East Sooke.  This species has been ending up in British Columbia waters more frequently in the past five years, and there have been other sightings this year in the Strait of Juan de Fuca/Puget Sound area on the Washington side.  There has been at least one other record for the Victoria checklist area from 2007, but that record has not been formally submitted for review.  As a result, once Cathy's superb photos of the juvenile Brown Booby, seen here, will go down as the first official record for the area.

I recognized the needle-in-a-haystack luck required in relocating the booby, but decided to give it a shot.  The bird was seen from Beechey Head in East Sooke, so I decided to head to a spot that not many birders think to visit.  I drove out to the westernmost point of East Sooke, which puts you at a rather unpleasant development called Silver Spray.  This development has been around for ages, but it seemed to get put on the backburner for more than a decade.  I was surprised to see there was an open house within the gates of the development, so it appears a developer is well underway to finish off this project.  It's a real shame, but hopefully they will retain some public land there because it is a great vantage point for seawatching.  I followed a crude crushed rock trail down to a leveled off area and set up the scope.  I started by checking the rocks below, but only had California, Heermann's, Thayer's, Mew, and Glaucous-winged Gulls.  On the water, Common Murres were plentiful.  The close waters had no oddball birds, so I pushed my scan further offshore.  I quickly spotted the fluke of a Humpback Whale way out in the strait.  While scanning back and forth for a blow from the Humpback, I spotted a log with a few birds sitting on it.  If you're going to spot a booby, it'll either be flying (and hopefully plunge-diving), resting on a log, or sitting on a boat mast.  One of the birds on the log was dark and bulky.  I was immediately intrigued by its relatively squat-legged, pot-bellied, long-tailed appearance, but I wanted to ensure it wasn't a cormorant with its neck coiled or even just a juvenile gull.

The bird was content sitting on the log and after over an hour it had only budged a few times.  I tried to maintain focus on the bird, but had to give my eyes periodic relief due to the monochromatic pale grey sea and sky that provided a backdrop.  On a couple occasions, the bird stretched its wings and these events provided glimmers of hope that it was indeed a booby.  I would have expected a cormorant to uncoil its neck, but when the dark bird on the log flapped, it maintained a thick neck.  The wings looked long and pointed, too, much like one of the photos Cathy managed.  I got really hopefully when a large Glaucous-winged Gull circled over the log and decided to land on it.  The gull flushed off a couple other gulls and began to walk over to the booby-like bird.  The bird again flapped up its wings, but did not budge.  I watched the bird for more than an hour and half under conditions that occasionally saw wisps of fog add to already trying conditions.  The entire time I watched the bird, I knew I had stay on it until it flew.  I had no idea if I would just be sitting there until sundown or not.  Finally, however, the bird raised its wings and pushed off the log and took flight.  This was the moment I had been waiting for and it could have deflated me in an instant if a snake-like neck had shot out and squared-off wings carried the bird off low over the water.  Instead, everything crystalized.  The bird maintained a long, thick neck blending right into the head.  The wings were long, and slightly swept back, the tail was also long.  The bird gave lumbering-but-strong wing beats with the occasional glide thrown in.  I have seen many Northern Gannets off Newfoundland, both Brown and Blue-footed Boobies in waters off Mexico, Central America and South America, and Masked Boobies off O'ahu.  In other words, I know what a sulid looks like in flight.  For a moment, I thought the Brown Booby was going to hitch a ride on a large tug that had passed by 15 minutes earlier, but instead it swirled down and dropped onto another log.  I was riding pretty high and had hoped to stay on the bird for a while longer, but after another 10 minutes a light drizzle started over land and soon the band of water containing the booby was enveloped in a veil of light fog.

I have been told this photo does my observation more harm than good, but I don't really understand why one would disregard the written description and focus on something not really in focus - the photo is grainy, pixellated, and heavily cropped.  The photo borders on useless, but I still see some features there that I view as booby-like.  The bird is dark, pot-bellied, and long-tailed.  I am including the photo just to show that you can't always get effective documentation.  In the birding world, photographic evidence has pretty much become the standard and anything less is suspect.  Gone are the days of careful observation, written notes, and field sketches.  Instead, it seems you'll gain more traction if you just raise your camera and snap a shot.  I frequently have to make difficult decisions about observations just like this on the British Columbia Bird Records Committee.  I have found it quite refreshing to see that careful written descriptions can sometimes inspire more confidence than a photograph.  In fact, some records get shelved due to a lack of a written description when the photographic evidence fails.  You can tell some identifications are an afterthought and actually the result of putting too much emphasis on a photo that may not accurately portray a bird.  Okay... I think that's enough of that little tangent.

With the Black-throated Sparrow and Brown Booby, the two notches added to my Victoria checklist area belt, I have edged very close to the 300 milestone.  I currently sit at 298.  Perhaps I will have to take a run up to Spectacle Lake to see if I can finally pick up a checklist area Grey Jay.  I like to think of it a bird in my back pocket, but it will probably be more difficult than I think to connect with one.  Hopefully this El Niño has a few more surprises in store for us!

Alliteration Saturday: Solitary Sandpiper, succumbed Sandhill, and Self-found Success

I got a text this morning from Jody Wells about some shorebird activity at Saanichton Spit.  After a couple texts back-and-forth, I called him and we chatted for a bit.  At some point in the conversation, I was reminded that some people actually read this blog and that I suck at updating it.  That more or less forced me to get out and find some birds today and even though I could easily dig through the vault from the past month, I will post my current sightings instead.

After a rather late start, I headed out towards Thetis Lake Regional Park.  On the way, I thought I would check to see if any water remained at Hastings Flats.  Well, there is just enough water to host a couple dozen Least Sandpipers on the flats on the south side of the road and a decent-sized patch of standing water on the north side had a single Solitary Sandpiper.  Having just watched the one in the flooded area off Welch Rd. near Livesay St., I knew it was a Solitary without even raising my binoculars.  I probably see anywhere from two to ten in Victoria in a given year, so they're somewhat uncommon and always a treat to observe.

The barred tail, dark olive back with white spots, yellow-green legs, and prominent "spectacles" all point to Solitary Sandpiper

Last weekend, a Sandhill Crane was found at Hastings Flats and by early evening it was suggested it was not in good shape.  The bird was seen on Monday, but the reports ceased after that.  Today, I noticed a trail of feathers leading to a carcass on the southern flat.  I walked out to it and confirmed it was the Sandhill Crane.  I wonder if the long journey north was too energetically demanding for this bird and it couldn't rebound.  It was a cruel fate and I know some people don't like to hear about death in nature.  Well... if you're one of those people, you should probably stop reading now because you'll hate the next picture!

Turkey Vulture looming over Sandhill Crane carcass

Carrying on the theme of how cruel nature can be, I witnessed a rather remarkable scene just before leaving the flats.  I watched a Red-tailed Hawk heading rapidly to the patch of oaks flanking the southern flats on the east side.  It had its talons dropped and dashed right in to the oak.  It flushed out a second Red-tailed Hawk, which zipped out of the oaks and was soon followed by the first.  The first Red-tailed aggressively swooped at the second, which forced it to drop a meal from its talons. It turned out to be either a duckling or gosling, and the first Red-tailed pounced immediately and carried it up to the oaks.  Quite the macabre place today, but it instills awe over any other emotion for me.

Thetis Lake was pretty much a bust.  I was hoping to bump in to Dusky Flycatcher, but I would have settled for a Hammond's.  Neither obliged.  I did, however, hear my first Black-headed Grosbeak of the year and plenty of Wilson's Warblers, Townsend's Warblers, and Pacific-slope Flycatchers were singing and/or calling.

I headed back to the Saanich Peninsula before 6:00 p.m. because I had to pick up Janean from the airport.  I had time to scan some of the fence lines around the airport and also a nice plowed field off Willingdon Rd.  The plowed field was where the magic happened.  I learned to check this particular field a couple years ago when I had a single Whimbrel standing on the turned-over soil.  The field was plowed in the last week, so I have made a couple visits recently, but no shorebirds were found other than Killdeer.  This time, I scanned over the field with my binoculars and very quickly spotted a large shorebird with a decurved bill.  I have been able to observe several Whimbrel over the past week and could tell immediately this was no Whimbrel.  The overall colour was a warm tan with dark checkering and the bill was LONG.  I zipped back to the car to get the scope and confirmed my suspicion: a Long-billed Curlew!  The slightly closer views revealed the signature bill shape, indistinct crown stripes, and a prominent teardrop-shaped eyering.  I soaked in a minute of views and then rushed off to get Janean.  Even though she had just endured nearly a day of travel coming from Dublin, I informed her I was up to my usual antics and had to go back to document my curlew.  She's always a trooper and even joined me to watch the curlew through the scope while I snapped off some pictures.

Classic Long-billed Curlew!

We watched the curlew for maybe five minutes before it decided to take flight.  The bird called as it flew northeast over the airport.

View of the Long-billed Curlew flying off

So, to account for the final alliterative component to the title, this was a self-found Victoria tick for me.  As you may know from previous entries, my Victoria checklist area self-found list is one I take great pride in, so I was pretty thrilled to finally find my own curlew.  I even hoped it might be in that exact field.  When I had that Whimbrel two years ago, I was certain it was going to be a Long-billed Curlew.  Try as I might, I couldn't turn it into one.  I had a similar scenario last Tuesday when rolling along Lochside Dr. between Island View and Martindale Rds.  A field there had recently been plowed and there was a lighter brown spot that contrasted the darker, turned-over soil.  I was hoping for Long-billed Curlew because one had been reported by Mike McGrenere the day before.  It, too, turned out to be a Whimbrel.  For comparison, I have an even worse record shot of the Whimbrel.  It should give you an idea of how they differ even at a distance.  Features to look at, include: colder overall colouration, bolder head pattern, lack of a prominent eyering, comparatively shorter and more evenly decurved bill, and indistinct (less bold) checkering on the back and wings.

Record shot of Whimbrel from Martindale Flats

To wrap this up, the Long-billed Curlew was my 254th self-found bird for Victoria.  Catching up with one was a great way to end my sunny Saturday session.

I Heard It Through the Kiwi Vine...

A few weeks ago, if you'll recall, I managed to see my first Clay-coloured Sparrow in the Victoria checklist area.  I even made brief mention of the next five species I anticipated to add as I work towards 300.  Well, you can pretty much guarantee it won't work out the way you anticipate and I pretty instantly derailed my list.

On June 24, Ann Nightingale headed over to Livesay Rd. where Bullock's Orioles were first noted four days earlier.  Not only were the orioles still around, but a song rarely heard in Victoria was being repeated in the backdrop.  Luckily Ann recognized the repeated "che-bek" phrase as a singing Least Flycatcher.  Unfortunately for me, I was working in the interior and heading to Valemount for four more days of work.  Even worse, the trail went cold the next morning after it put in a brief appearance.  It wasn't reported over the next two days and I figured it was yet another Least Flycatcher that had slipped through my grasp due to my absence from the Victoria area.

The Newells are a persistent bunch and they not only checked in on the orioles on June 28, but they also decided to check around the kiwi farms near the intersection of Martindale and Welch.  Surprisingly enough, they relocated the Least Flycatcher singing around the kiwi farm - awesome!  I was finishing up my work that day and had a day of natural history mayhem planned for the next day down in the Okanagan.  I wasn't about to rush back to Victoria for the Least Flycatcher, but I made sure to stay updated on its status.  After a morning in Princeton and Manning Park on the 30th, I was bound for Swartz Bay on the 6 p.m. ferry.  While on the ferry, I read an update from Mike McGrenere saying that he had the Least in the morning.  I wanted to pop in to drop off some Okanagan cherries to my dad, but I planned to make it quick so I could put in a bit of time before dark trying to hear or see the flycatcher.  I mentioned it to my dad and he wanted to join me, so we hopped in my work truck and we headed on over to the kiwi farms.  I am fortunately very familiar with Least Flycatcher due to the areas I work, so I stood still and just listened.  It took a minute, but I heard a distant "che-bek" at the far end of the kiwi farm on the south side of Martindale Rd.  We tracked the bird down to the row of poplars at the south side of the farm.  I popped just inside the row of poplars along the road and managed to see a little empid with obvious white wingbars high up in one of the poplars.  It wasn't the best view, but it was most definitely my first Least Flycatcher in the Victoria checklist area!

My dad didn't really get a great view of the bird before it flew to the north end of the farm.  I listened for it to sing again and determined it was half way down the north line of poplars.  Then it stopped singing for a bit and when it restarted, it was over in the kiwi farm kitty corner to us.  We crossed over to it and there my dad was able to briefly observe the Least as it sat on a drooping kiwi vine about 10 metres away at eye level.  What a great bird to add and it didn't quite make my cut for the top five next expected species.  It was pretty close and I debated putting it on over Pink-footed Shearwater and Long-tailed Jaeger because I don't do much in the way of "pelagic" birding here.

I don't have any audio files or photos to support this blog entry, so I will have to make up for it with a photo extravaganza soon.  Photos would have been miserable anyways due to the low light conditions.  Knowing this is a new Victoria bird for me, I will do the standard update on my progress towards 300 species in the checklist area.  The Least Flycatcher is my 294th species and it was actually a tiebreaker for me to jump back ahead of Jeremy Kimm.  I probably fretted at his progress over the past few years as he quickly closed the gap and then momentarily passed me.  At the same time, I knew he was adding species I hadn't seen and it was only a matter of time before I recouped those losses.  Mission accomplished!  If that sounds extremely competitive, it's actually all in good fun.  We congratulate each other genuinely when we add new birds to our Victoria checklist and JK even prods me to hurry up and get my Grey Jay already.  I think we both enjoy the friendly competitive edge and schoolyard maturity taunting.  So... bring on the next one!

This fella got a Spizella

The inevitable happened again while I was away working.  I am a sucker for punishment, so I still follow what's going on in Victoria while I'm away and let's just say the last two weeks were hot.  First, during the Metchosin Bioblitz a homeowner photographed a male Hooded Oriole at their feeder.  I probably would have moped a little more if this bird put on a good show, but no birders were able to enjoy this bird.  The next week, both Eastern and Western Kingbirds were all over the place and then Jeff Gaskin had a Black Phoebe in the midst of all the kingbird mayhem near Blenkinsop Lake.  Finally, an inconspicuous report was mentioned in the transcript for the Victoria Rare Bird Alert: a possible Clay-coloured Sparrow singing near the Vancouver Island Technology Park.  If the latter was identified correctly, that would be three birds I have never seen in Victoria.  Painful!'

I got home on the evening of June 7 and planned to get out the next morning to try to connect with a good bird or two of my own.  First, however, I thought I would follow up on the possible Clay-coloured Sparrow that received no further mention on BCVIBIRDS or the rare bird alert.  I drove past Quick's Bottom and towards the Vancouver Island Technology Park at around 8:30 a.m.  Having just worked for nearly three weeks up in Fort McMurray where Clay-coloured Sparrows are a dime dozen, I was confident I would easily pick out a Clay-coloured Sparrow if it was still around singing.  I rolled the window down in the car and cruised along slowly.  Within seconds of putting the window down, I heard the distinct "bzzzzz bzzzzz bzzzzz" of a Clay-coloured!  The idea of that species being exciting after coming back from a play where they're abundant is somewhat absurd, but this species was long overdue for me in Victoria.  Maybe relieved is a better description of how I felt.

To put this bogey bird in perspective, let me relate it to Brewer's Sparrow - the other rare Spizella that occasionally turns up in Victoria.  Brewer's Sparrow has fewer than 10 records on Vancouver Island, while Clay-coloured Sparrow has been recorded likely more than 20 times.  I have been fortunate enough to see two Brewer's Sparrows in Victoria, thanks to the sharp ears of Ian Cruickshank both times.  This unlikely discrepancy is due largely to typical windows these two species show up in the region.  Brewer's Sparrow is often found in the spring, and that is certainly the case for the two birds that Ian found that I was able to capitalize on.  Clay-coloured Sparrows, on the other hand, typically show up in the late summer or early fall in the Pacific Northwest.  I just seem to get unlucky with absences in the fall when Clay-coloured Sparrows show up.  Lucky for me, this Clay-coloured Sparrow decided to break the mould and set up a territory on a tiny shrub-dotted knoll in Layritz Park!

Male Clay-coloured Sparrow singing from the top of a Scotch Broom shrub at Layritz Park on June 8, 2014

As you can see, this bird was cooperatively content singing his heart out from the tops of shrubs within its territory.  Not only did I snap off a few photos, I have been exploring the use of my camera as a means of recording songs and calls of birds.  It works surprisingly well!  If you have a digital camera that allows you to take videos, you can record the bird singing or calling and then extract the audio file using software.  For this I use the free VLC Media Player and it works perfectly for my purpose.  Once you extract the audio recording, you can upload it to a site like xeno-canto and it provides you with a nice little sonogram that can be embedded into something like a blog.  How convenient is that?  Here is the recording of the Clay-coloured Sparrow from Sunday morning:

I am not sure how much content I actually post on my blog about the actual "art" of birding, but I think the above qualifies as a little tip for modern birding.  Do whatever you can to document a bird.  There will always be cases where a bird legitimately can't be well-documented, but I think we're getting to a point where the majority of the rarities should have some form of presentable evidence.  If you hadn't thought of the above, give it a try with even some regular species.  If you need assistance with the conversion of your movie file to audio, drop me a line and I'll see if I can walk you through it.  I am new to this, too, but it is a rather effective way to document a bird that is very skulky, but regularly vocalizes.  For example, what if by some outlandishly glorious twist of fate you found a Yellow Rail giving its "tick-tick... tick-tick-tick" calls from a wet meadow on southern Vancouver Island?  Do you think you're going to see it and get photos of it?  Maybe you can lure it out with playback and get lucky, but probably not.  I would now be inclined to switch my digital camera to video mode and start recording in hopes that it picks up the calls.

If you don't think documenting rare birds is important, you should have a read through a very recent piece on the ABA blog by George Armistead by clicking "here".... here.  That was a weird way to do that.  Anyways, don't take that article personally.  There will always be birders that don't understand that we all get something different out of this hobby.  I find it very helpful when rare birds are documented and I am grateful when I receive an e-mail about a rarity that is accompanied with some sort of tangible evidence.  Do I really care if someone hasn't photographed a vagrant?  In the end, no... not really.  Depending on whether it's the first documented record of that species in the province or even in the local checklist area, it may or may not get accepted due to a lack of proof.  That doesn't mean it didn't happen, but rather it greatly diminishes the critical evaluation of the identification by a records committee.  Okay, that's all I plan to say about that because I have now strayed off topic farther than the Clay-coloured strayed to end up in Victoria.

Let me just wrap this up with a little update.  First, the bird is still, as of June 11, singing up a storm by the small rocky knoll at Layritz Park near the Vancouver Island Technology Park.  And finally, the Clay-coloured Sparrow was the 293rd species for me in the Victoria checklist area.  I am still clawing my way up towards 300 and hopefully I'll be able to inch my way up a little more this year.  This and Say's Phoebe were two species that continually sat in my top 5 next expected birds to be added, so I'll have to revisit that list and adjust it now that they're knocked down.  Feel free to help me out by timing your rarity discoveries with my arrivals back in the Victoria area!  Lark Sparrow, Dusky Flycatcher, and Grey Jay are my top three, so I just need to think about what's next after that.  Maybe Pink-footed Shearwater and Long-tailed Jaeger?  Yes... consider that a wish list.

The Phoebe Ain't No Freebie!

Last weekend, while I was in Whistler, news broke about a possible Eastern Phoebe discovered by the Saturday birding group in the abandoned Aquattro development lot near Esquimalt Lagoon.  I think we were just being humoured with the "possible" label because the fuzzy photos first posted had just enough detail to leave little doubt as to its identity.

The next day the phoebe was again found working its way around a small pond and several birders were able to see it.  The bird was elusive at times, though, and many birders also missed the bird after spending a couple hours searching for it.  I was first able to get out to look for this major local rarity - the first photo-documented record to be exact - on Tuesday and I spent the first few hours of the morning trudging around bearing boots and binoculars.  The weather was lousy.  It rained for almost the entire time I was there and I unfortunately had to leave just as the sun broke.  I was suffered with good birding company around me as Aziza Cooper, Barbara Begg, Jeff Gaskin, and, just as I was on my way out, Alan MacLeod and Ron Satterfield were all in attendance to look for the bird.  I believe only Aziza and David Stirling saw the bird by the end of the day and their sighting came about an hour after I had left.

Today, I had only two hours to work with and about an hour of that was dedicated to driving out to the site.  When I got there, I was quickly greeted by Cathy Carlson and her hour's worth of effort was fruitless.  Geoffrey and David Newell were also there and they also had not connected with the phoebe.  Good eyes had already covered the obvious spots, so I decided to search a spot I noticed on Google Maps.  The main pond the phoebe has been found around is actually part of a series of small ponds connected by a little stream.  I decided to walk west around a fence and try to find the uppermost pond that appeared to be of equal size to the main pond.  When I found the pond, I had a good feeling about it.  The unfamiliar chip note I was hearing from the far end of the pond was also promising.  The whitish spot in the alders in the direction of the call was very, very promising.  I raised my binoculars and my eyes soaked in the details of a perfect Eastern Phoebe specimen.  Dark cap, pale throat, and a very slight yellow wash to the belly were noted.  The bird then fluttered down to snap up an insect just over the water and sallied back up to the alders.

I didn't even take the time to enjoy the bird and decided I would try to Geoffrey and David Newell over to see it.  I wasn't sure if it was a lifer for them, but I have seen them many times when I worked in the Peace Region.  I ran back to the main pond as fast as I could, but by the time I got there they had seemingly departed.  I headed back to get better looks, but the phoebe had worked its way into the close corner and when I made it out near the pond it flew into the flooded marshy section of the forest patch to the south.  I could hear it calling for another minute and then lost track of it.

I was happy to see an Eastern Phoebe in the Victoria area, which puts me up to 291 in the Victoria checklist area.  The additions were very sparse last year and it's not too often I am actually around when something exciting turns up.  What's next you ask?  Well... hopefully the amazing-yet-heartbreaking news about a Redwing can be rectified with a miraculous relocation of the bird.  If you haven't heard the news, a photograph of a bird seen on Wilkinson Rd. in mid-December was recently circulated and identified as a Redwing.  What a dream bird!  It is not only the first record for British Columbia, but also just the third record for western North America!  So... fingers crossed!