Category: Uncategorized

October 11th. 2011.The signature colours of N.W British Columbia in mid-October are gold, orange and yellow set off against the dark expanses of the spruces and mountains. This colour scheme is taken up by the Varied Thrush, a striking bird, similar and closely related to the American Robin, and found in dense, moist coniferous forests. My first fleeting view of a Varied Thrush came this cool morning against a soundscape of rushing mountain streams.

I spent part of the afternoon scanning a still, small lake trying to make out distant birdlife. It was the right time and place because within minutes a Western Grebe paddled past at close quarters. It was my bird of the day. Two Red-necked Grebes and a pair of American Cootes fed not far off, a small group of Lesser Scaup wheeled by in tight formation and in the distance a Black Tern (BLTE) picked food from the lake surface.

The BLTE had been a puzzle to me for several days, I had seen it before but at such a distance that I was far from sure about it. It was swooping in large loops and twists with a light flitting flight, rather like a nighthawk, and making low passes over the water to pick at food. No field guide lent support to the idea that it might be a BLTE, but today it was close enough to make out clearly.  One of the lessons of this week (learned with Sandhill Cranes and now BLTE) is that the field guides are rather sketchy about range when it comes to places like the interior of British Columbia.

Anyway, here’s the Western Grebe.

October 10th. 2011.  The Wren is how I first knew it; just the Wren – popular country lore called it Jenny Wren; Troglodytes troglodytes. Impossibly tiny  brown birds, the size of a baby’s fist, with an intense, complex song like the dark and tangled brush piles they favour. Much  later I discovered that the (Jenny) Wren that I grew up with is the same bird as America’s Winter Wren, also Troglodytes troglodytes.

In time I learned that wrens as a family are birds of the New World, consequently the greatest number of wren species is found in the Americas; nine species in North America and more than thirty in Mexico.

Things have changed since I was first birding.  The (Jenny /Winter) Wren is a bird of perhaps many  species, so  Troglodytes troglodytes has been split. Not sure if you’re following this, but anyway now there’s Troglodytes pacificus, the Pacific Wren.

On a walk up an severe cleft in a B.C mountainside I heard the familiar peppery ‘tchkkk’ and with a bit of coaxing, managed to catch a glimpse of my first Pacific Wren.  Just as compact, just as busy, just as confident in its tinnyness as it’s former congeners, T. troglodytes.

A new-to-me species is deservedly (though not always) bird of the day and Pacific Wren was it today.  Frankly the competition was slender, a visit to a stunningly beautiful lake earlier in the day only produced 2 Red-necked Grebes, a handful of Common Loons and a female Wood Duck, while a Common Raven was calling hollowly from the other side.

Here’s one of the Red-necked Grebes.