The End

Here it is. The highly averted final blog post.

Total Species Count

In 2015, 265 species were reported to eBird from Metro Vancouver County, which is fairly consistent with the five year average of 264 (σ=1.73). I also made note of any additional rarities that were not reported to eBird, which included the following 12 species:

White-faced Ibis – Sep 11 at Reifel

Willet – Aug 10 at Boundary Bay

Little Stint – Aug 8 at Boundary Bay

Forster’s Tern – May 27 at White Rock Beach

Costa’s Hummingbird – May 3 in Burnaby

Calliope Hummingbird – Aug 16-17 in Coquitlam

Yellow-bellied Sapscuker – March 9 in Southlands

Prairie Falcon – Jan 12 in Pitt Meadows

Black-and-white Warbler – Dec 18 at Nitobe Memorial Garden

Brewer’s Sparrow – Sep 16 at Iona

Indigo Bunting – Dec 20-25 in Port Coquitlam

Rose-breasted Grosbeak – May 27-28 in North Vancouver

There was also a Rock Wren at Pt. Roberts, which is outside the eBird Metro Vancouver County, but part of the official Vancouver checklist area. This brings the 2015 total to 279 species.

My year end total was 260 (93.19%) for the official Vancouver checklist area, and 258 (97.36%) for eBird Metro Vancouver County.  At the start of the year, I had said I was striving for 260-something, while realistically hoping to reach 250. I guess both goals were achieved.

Biggest Misses

There are two approaches to identifying my biggest miss: 1) the commonest bird that I should have seen but didn’t, and 2) the rarest bird that was reported that I didn’t see.

The following are my top contenders in category 1:

#3 Northern Goshawk. They aren’t always easy, but often at least one will settle for the winter at a location with a good food source somewhere in Vancouver. That did not happen during the winter of 2014/2015 or 2015/2016, although there were occasional reports.

#2 Willet. This is an underappreciated rarity in Vancouver because a few birds have repeatedly over-wintered at several locations for many consecutive years. Most recently, one to two have wintered at the White Rock pier during most winters from 2005 to 2014 (disappearing in November 2014), and as luck would have it did not return in 2015. Finding a Willet during migration is no easy feat, and this year’s only sighting was a one-tide wonder at Boundary Bay on August 10.

#1 Wandering Tattler. This is a species that is essentially annual in Metro Vancovuer and its occurrence is very localized and highly predictable: adults show up on the Iona south jetty from mid- to late-July, and juveniles from late-August to mid-September. The Iona south jetty receives almost daily coverage, including from one intrepid walker in particular who, leading up to 2015, has found tattlers on the south jetty for seven consecutive years. But 2015 was, disappointingly, a tattler-less year in Vancouver. Due to its general reliability and predictability I haven chosen Wandering Tattler as my biggest miss of 2015 in the “commonest” category.

The following are my top contenders in category 2:

#3 Little Stint. This bird was found by KELO on Aug 8 while I was only a few kilometers down the dyke.  I received prompt notification but got stuck behind a horse-drawn buggy, such that JORE made it from 96^th to 104^th on bike faster than I did by car. In this instance, speed was not a difference maker (but makes for a good story) since the stint was seen for seconds before the area was inundated by thousands of peeps. I searched for the remainder of that night, the following day, and the day after, but all to no avail.

#2 Indigo Bunting. Because it was present at a feeder for five days.

#1 Blue-gray Gnatcatcher. I missed this one simply because I did not act fast enough, and really had no reason not to. It was successfully twitched by a few first-responders before disappearing within hours. This was another KELO bird, and had he not found me a few others in 2015, he’d be quite unpopular with me.

Best Birds

Picking a best bird from my list is a bit of a struggle, not because there are so many rarities to choose from, but indeed the opposite. My list was largely built from an abundance of annual and semi-annual rarities. During a big year, they all count as 1, so getting a Vesper Sparrow is as important as getting the Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, even though I expect to see Vespers 3 years out of 5, and still have not caught a gnatcatcher locally. Having said that, here are my top picks:

#3 Ross’ Goose. Perhaps somewhat overdue, this was a Vancouver first for me.

#2 Hoary Redpoll. Based on rarity alone, this would take the top slot. This was the first photo-documented record for Vancouver.

#1 White-tailed Ptarmigan. It was the experience that bumped this to the top of my list: a pleasant winter hike with a good group of friends and unlikely odds of success that delivered the prize. Although ptarmigan are likely present on our north shore mountains during the winter a lot more often than they are reported, it still represents a fantastic year bird!

Closing Thoughts:

I would best describe a Vancouver big year as a tiring affair with fluctuating enjoyment. If done seriously, one has to be prepared to drop anything and twitch everything immediately, which becomes tiring even if the twitches are successful, which often they are not. Equally as tiring is having to look for birds you need but have not been reported based on their probability of occurrence at a given time of year. These are generally low success rate endeavors and I lost track of the number of hours spent sorting through gulls, scanning for Yellow-billed Loons and searching for other unlikely things when I wanted to simply go birding, or stay at home altogether.

Below I present my big year enjoyment curve overlaid with my species accumulation curve. Peaks in enjoyment are generally correlated with rapid species accumulation, successfully connecting with target birds or milestones. Troughs generally represent prolonged periods with no year birds, repeated dips or good birds being found while I was out of town.

Figure 1: Weekly big year enjoyment and species accumulation.

Finally, my big year would not have been nearly as enjoyable or successful without special contribution from several people to whom I owe special gratitude. First and foremost, MEHA for running the Vancouver bird alert and promptly sharing rare bird notifications, which contributed to a significant portion of my list. Secondly, the others alongside whom I pursued Vancouver Big Years of sorts (openly or in denial), namely MITO, MEHA, ROLY and GECL, thereby further motivating me to chase birds that I didn’t want to at times that were inconvenient. Thirdly, everyone who sent me updates and notices on my target birds; there are too many people to list, so: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ. Find your 4-letter code, this is your shout out! And finally, anyone and everyone who picked up their binos, pulled their socks up to their knees and went birding in 2015! I hope 2016 brings you a Siberian Accentor or something.

Happy New Year! The big year is officially over. I will make a final blog posting sometime in January summarizing the year. Stay tuned.

Things from the Great White North

December brought two year birds. Finding a Glaucous Gull on December 15 was a big sigh of relief after scanning countless gull flocks this winter and last. Rare, but annual, this is the first one I've heard of that anyone has turned up locally in 2015, and not for lack of looking. It was actually spotted by the vagrant AVBA before we even exited the vehicle. Some people have all the luck!

#259 - Glaucous Gull - December 15 - Ladner Trunk Rd & 88th St., Delta, BC

The next bird is, in my humble opinion, a contender for Vancouver Bird of the Year: Hoary Redpoll. The e-Fauna checklist of Rare Birds of Vancouver lists six hypothetical records of this species in Vancouver. So this one, found at Queen Elizabeth Park, may be the first photo documented record for the checklist area. To boot, the bird was extremely cooperative; feeding at eye level in the same few birch trees for at least five full days! 

#260 - Hoary Redpoll - December 21 - Queen Elizabeth Park, Vancouver, BC

The low-light of the month was having UBC campus security called on me while peering over the fence of the closed Nitobe Memorial Gardens in search of a Black-and-White Warbler. Fortunately , upon presentation of my pishing license, we were permitted to continue our unsuccessful search. I blame the whole incident on the two suspicious characters I was with, but I guess no Big Year is complete without a brush with the law, or something resembling it. 

Burrowing Owl at Sea Island

The discovery of a Burrowing Owl at Sea Island in November prompted the inevitable discussion regarding its origin. BC's wild Burrowing Owl population disappeared by about 1980 (Leupin and Low 2001) and the very small extant population is attributed largely to annual releases of captive-reared owls. I pursued some research about the BC Burrowing Owl Recovery Program, with specific interest in dispersal patterns and return rates in an attempt to, well, justify counting it. Over the course of my research I realized how little I knew about the Recovery Program, so decided to summarize a few items of interest here.

Mitchell et al. (2011) discuss some of the metrics I was looking for while comparing the success of two releases techniques: hard-released birds (i.e., those released directly in to the wild from artificial burrows) versus soft-released birds (i.e., those released in to an enclosure surrounding their artificial burrow prior to the wild).  Soft-releases appeared more successful with regard to site fidelity, breeding season survival, fledging rate, and ultimately population recruitment (Mitchell et al. 2011). I suspect soft-release techniques will (have?) gradually phase out hard-releases, and therefore will briefly summarize soft-release results only.

The soft release protocol is to place pairs of captive-reared yearling owls inside artificial burrows where they are held overnight before being released in to an enclosure, which is then removed after approximately two weeks. Released owls display high site fidelity, with 86% of released birds (n=140) from 2005 to 2007 staying following their release. During the same three year period, 69 adult pairs produced 168 fledglings, which had a 69% survival rate during a 40-day post fledging period based on a sample of radio-tracked juveniles. Typically, all owlets are captured inside artificial burrows and banded with a USFWS aluminum leg-band and a coloured alphanumeric leg-band when they are four weeks old. Only 5 of 71 (7%) fledglings from 2005 or 2006 returned in 2006 or 2007, resulting in a population recruitment of 0.17 offspring per soft-released pair. The return rate of released adults during the same period was 2% (1 of 62 adults). However, 28% of 'wild' adults (i.e., adults present prior to the annual release of captive-reared owls) returned again in the subsequent year (Mitchell et al. 2011).

Most adult and young owls leave their release sites by October, but there is little information regarding location of their wintering grounds (Mackintosh et al. 2004). One captive-reared owl wintered in Portland, Oregon in 2001 and again in 2002, and another in Port Townsend, WA in 2002 (Mackintosh et al. 2004). In the winter of 2013, a Burrowing Owl wintered in Tofino and another in Comox, but I do not recall if they were banded and whether their origin was determined.

(Aside: anyone interested in the Burrowing Owl Recovery Program and the associated challenges and successes of reintroduction efforts should check out the Burrowing Owl Conservation Society of BC web site).

The Sea Island bird was unbanded, which almost certainly eliminates the possibility of a released captive-reared bird because, presumably, none are missed during banding prior to release. Mitchell et al. (2011) mentions all owlets are banded at four weeks old, but it is uncertain whether the occurrence of unbanded birds at release sites indicates presence of wild birds or simply the progeny of released birds missed during previous banding efforts (Leupin 2004). This, coupled with (limited) knowledge of their dispersal patterns, a juvenile bird from a released captive-reared pair may be a possibility. 

Unlike many larger owls that moult their primaries and some other flight feathers over two or three cycles, Burrowing Owls have a complete pre-basic moult (Howell 2010), which unfortunately complicates ageing this bird relative to large owls that often have striking moult limits in their primaries. I noticed the primary tips looked quite worn and abraded on our owl, but is it too much wear for juvenal feathers? One wise guy quipped "of course they're worn, they live underground", which may be a valid point, but I haven't got enough experience with Burrowing Owls to confirm or deny. 

So, my conclusion: origin uncertain. And that's good enough for me! Every big year needs some controversial tick, and a Burrowing Owl in BC fits that niche quite nicely. 

#258 - Burrowing Owl - 22 Nov 2015 - Sea Island, Richmond, BC

References:

Howell, S. N. G. 2010. Molt in North American Birds. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, New York.

Leupin E. E. 2004. Burrowing Owl Athene cunicularia in Accounts and Measures for Managing Identified Wildlife - Southern Interior Forest Region V. 2004. BC Ministry of Water, Land and Air Protection. pp. 137-147

Leupin E. E. and D. J. Low. 2001. Burrowing owl reintroduction efforts in the Thomposn-Nicola Region of British Columbia. Journal of Raptor Research 35: 392-398.

Mackintosh, M., E. Leupin and D. Brodie. 2004. Burrowing Owls in B.C. - Science and Stewardship in Action. Proceedings of the Species at Risk 2004 Pathways to Recovery Conference, March 2-6, 2004, Victoria, BC.

Mitchell, A. M., T. I. Wellicome, D. Brodie and K. Cheng. 2011. Captive-reared burrowing owls show higher site-affinity, survival, and reproductive performance when reintroduced using a soft-release. Biological Conservation 144: 1382-1391.

Mock yeah, Ing yeah, Bird yeah

With limited time for blogging, I thought I'd let Harry and Lloyd tell you all about my next year bird.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5f_gbzo4Q0

#255 + 2. Northern Mockingbird. 21 Nov 2015. Ladner, BC. 

Winter Finches

(N. B.: after 11 months of blogging about my big year, I thought I would attempt to write something at least somewhat educational.) 

My big year recently received a boost from what is shaping up to be a good finch winter. "What exactly is a good finch winter?" you ask. In this instance, "good" is measured from the perspective of a birder, and a winter qualifies as good with the presence of White-winged Crossbills and Common Redpolls. The local abundance of these species varies among years, and some winters none or very few are present. 

Unlike most northern hemisphere songbirds, White-winged Crossbills do not follow the typical north-to-south migration. Instead, they are nomadic, moving in response to the presence of their principal food. Their geographic distribution is closely associated with that of conifers in the genus Picea, and their movements are linked to patterns of conifer use.

A probability of observation (PObs) map for White-winged Crossbill, taken from the BC Breeding Bird Atlas (http://www.birdatlas.bc.ca). The PObs maps are created by incorporating topographic variables into models to make predictions about the likelihood of detecting a species in all areas of the province, within a fixed amount of time (20 hours). Granted this map is based on data collected by atlases during the breeding season, I would still like to point out the 0% probability of observation in Metro Vancouver (click map to enlarge).  

In late June and July, the cones of most conifers are developing and seed inside cones of tamarack and white spruce are among the most accessible. In May, White-winged Crossbills are often on the move as birds search for developing white spruce cone crops sufficiently large to support breeding. White spruce cones shed most of their seed between mid-September and early November. Crossbills generally remain in the area as long as seed abundance is high and leave once it declines, switching then to black spruce. Black spruce cones open later in the year than white spruce and their seeds often remain inside their cones through to the following summer. In late spring, White-winged Crossbills typically migrate from areas of black spruce to areas with developing white spruce cone crops regardless of black spruce seed availability. When the spruce cone crop is poor, crossbills can irrupt into regions south of their usual range in search of good cone crops.

Distribution of three spruce (Picea) species in British Columbia, taken from the Tree Species Compendium (https://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfp/silviculture/compendium/index.htm). Top to bottom: Engelmann spruce, black spruce and white spruce. Notice any similarities to the White-winged Crossbill probability of observation map?

Though perhaps not quite a full scale irruption, some White-winged Crossbills have turned up on Mount Seymour this winter and were a welcome addition to my year list.

#253. White-winged Crossbill. 20 Nov 2015. Mount Seymour.

While crossbills are nomadic, Common Redpolls are considered ‘irruptive’, meaning they exhibit regular seasonal movements, the extent of which varies between years. One suggested cause behind their irruptive movements is their dependence on birch and alder seeds. Seed shortages may cause redpolls to travel farther from their breeding range in winter, stopping when they encounter sufficient food rather than a pre-programmed destination.

#254. Common Redpoll. 21 Nov 2015. Sea Island.

Redpolls have been reported widely this November, but seemingly from everywhere where I was not. It took some time before finally finding some of my own on Sea Island.

Count Update: 254 + 2 on Nov 21.

Back to Back Birds at Pt. Bob

After a bit of a lull, I got 252 + 1 and 252 + 2 both at Pt. Roberts.

You may recall from an earlier post that there are two versions of the Vancouver checklist area, one which includes the small peninsula of Pt. Roberts in Washington, and one that doesn't. Thus far I have made a (completely unnecessary) effort to keep both versions identical for numerical simplicity. However, after seeing a Rock Wren (#252 + 1) at Pt. Roberts on November 1st, my lists have once again diverged and will likely stay this way given the local rarity of this species. 

The main significance of this Rock Wren is that it was #250 for MEHA, the fourth person to join the 2015 250 Club. And so I would like to extend a big congratulations to someone who has greatly facilitated the rapid exchange of rare bird alerts and contributed immensely to everyone's Big Years. 

#252 + 1. Rock Wren. November 1, 2015. Pt. Roberts, WA.

After seeing several Ancient Murrelets (#252 + 2) at Pt. Roberts on November 15, I still felt compelled to make an effort to see them in the eBird Metro Vancouver county. My efforts since have included a sea watch from the end of the Iona south jetty, which produced only Marbled Murrelets, and a walk-on sailing on the Tsawassen-Duke Pt. ferry, which produced Ancient Murrelets only on the Vancouver Island side of the sailing, as determined by plugging GPS coordinates into eBird. It has been a great deal of (completely unnecessary) effort for a semi-year bird. Life would be much easier if birders ignored the international border across Pt. Roberts just the same as these murrelets do. 

 Count update: 252 + 2 on Nov 15.