DARE TO BIRD

Ilya said he wanted to take me to Manning Park because he knows it is one of my favourite places to bird in BC. I am actually going to lead a Young Birder's Trip there in a month. Anyways Ilya and I were pleasantly surprised with how warm it was but half of Lightning Lake trail and all of Strawberry Flats trail was covered in snow. We went to Lightning Lake first where we saw a Snowshoe Hare, Columbian Ground Squirrels and Chipmunks. We then saw Barrow's Goldeneyes, tons of Townsend's, Wilson's and Yellow Warblers (none would pose for a photo), Interior subspecies of Steller's Jay, Warbling Vireos, Dark-eyed Juncos, Kinglets, Nuthatches, Spotted Sandpiper, Common Mergansers, Chestnut-backed and Mountain Chickadees. We watched an Osprey grab a fish. I had never seen an Osprey there before so it was cool. After walking around the whole lake, we went to Strawberry Flats. Here we were bombared with cute Gray Jays who eagerly wanted my peanuts. We fed them and took so...

Good friends John Reynolds, Quentin Brown, George Clulow , Ilya Povalyaev and I did a big day on May 23rd! It was so much fun. Ilya designed the idea and plan and we were to start at 4:30am. Due to the late date we found most birds on breeding territories. Our route focused on breeding birds and maximized opportunities to pick-up late shorebirds & waterbirds to be most productive. I suggested we head east instead of south when leaving the north shore in order to avoid rush hour traffic over the Lions Gate Bridge/downtown. This was our schedule for the day artfully planned by Ilya Povalyaev: 0445 - 0600: Cypress Mtn (sunrise 5:19) 0600 - 0700: drive to Burnaby, with stops for AMDI & PIGU 0700 - 0730: Burnaby Lake 0800 - 0845: Colony Farm 0915 - 0945: Minnekhada 1015 - 1100: Grant Narrows 1100 - 1300: drive to White Rock/lunch/contingency birds 1300 - 1330: White Rock Pier 1345 - 1415: Kwomais Pt 1430 - 1515: Blackie Spit ...

On May 6th we went on our first overnight trip ever in the Young Birders Group. The kids were extremely excited and some parents told me that there kids have been talking about the trip for a week straight. The weather looked good and we all piled in the rental van on the 10:15 am ferry to Nanaimo. On the crossing over we spotted some Common Terns. We stopped and had a great lunch at a local bakery in Port Alberni and then went straight to Ucluelet. We checked into our hotel rooms and went to meet up with the Vancouver Island and Fort St James Young Birders who were meeting us at Amphitrite Point. Two young birders Liam Singh and Liron Gerstman spotted some Fork-tailed Storm-Petrels just past the lighthouse! This was an incredible start we watched many breeding Pacific Loons fly by and watched Black Oystercatchers forage amongst the black rocks. For many kids on the trip this was the first time they had ever been to Ucluelet or Tofino. They were amazed by the gorgeous s...