The Final Months of an Okanagan Winter

There comes a quiet time in the calendar when the sometimes unexpected warm temperatures of February melt the snow cover and the robins that have been in town after berries move upslope into higher neighbourhoods and starlings begin to appear in pairs poking around old buildings and holes in snags getting ready to get the reproductive jump on all the other birds. Junco flocks around feeders may contain fewer birds than they did in January, and male Red-winged Blackbirds position themselves in cattail ditches to sing "O-kla-ee". Human spirits rise, people phone the media to report the "first robin", and birders take heart that spring is on its way.

Then comes March. Ponds and lakes thaw and everyday becomes waterfowl day. From shore you tally Gadwalls, Mallards, American Wigeons, a Eurasian Wigeon or two if you're lucky, Northern Pintails, Northern Shovelers, Green-winged Teal, a Common Teal (the Eurasian version of the Green-wing) if you're really lucky, Ring-necked Ducks, Redheads, Canvasbacks, Greater Scaups, Lesser Scaups, Common Goldeneyes, Barrow's Goldeneyes, Bufflleheads, Hooded Mergansers, Common Mergansers, and if you're lucky again a few early Ruddy Ducks and Red-breasted Mergansers. During a better than average early spring a gyrfalcon or a Peregrine will stakeout the ducks for a day or two, adding life-and-death drama to the scene. Gore galore when a gyr knocks a teal out of the air than stands over the ducks and methodically plucks and rips apart the duck, sometimes while the duck is still alive.

After this plethora of early waterfowl, Mother Nature seems a real tight wad with land birds. The passerines and kin of early spring are just a trickle making March a slow month. You long for the first two swallows, Trees and Violet-greens but they are so finicky for the first few months.

Northern Pygmy-Owl "hugs" the trunk of a birch sapling as it watches roosting sparrows in a cedar hedge. Is this a common hunting strategy? Vernon, B.C. January, 2015. Photo by C. Siddle

Here are some suggested activities that may improve your late winter nature experiences.

1. Instead of searching for the first-of-the-season species, be content with the birds that are present. And how does one engender contentment in a mind yearning for novelty? Try looking more closely at birds. Start with one or two species. You might begin with a quest for Northern Shrikes, for instance. How many can you find in a day? What age class does each belong to? Try describing the habitat involved in each sighting. Watch each shrike to see if you can understand its hunting technique. Other questions will occur as you investigate. If shrikes aren't your thing, almost any of the other winter resident raptors will richly reward investigation: Red-tailed Hawks, Rough-legged Hawks, Northern Harriers, Cooper's Hawks, Sharp-shinned Hawks, Northern Goshawks (you should be so lucky!), Bald Eagles, Golden Eagles, American Kestrels, and Merlins.

The Bald Eagle is a good choice to study for its hunting techniques. Highly visible and easy to locate, most immature eagles can be individually identified while adults like this one are territorial and can be relied upon to reappear in familiar locations. Burton, B.C. 24 August 2014. Photo by C. Siddle. 

Let me give you an example. I noticed a Red-tailed Hawk perched atop a lamp standard along Silver Star Road near its junction with Foothill Drive in the North BX area of Vernon. As I walked briskly by the hawk (if I had paused, it would have flown) I wondered why that hawk chose to perch where it did. Then it occurred to me that across the road from the Red-tail was a steep south-facing slope, created by the road builders and planted with varieties of grasses and low shrubs by the developers of Foothills subdivision many years ago. Because of its aspect, the slope was snow free, one of the only snow free patches in the neighbourhood. Could that be my answer? Were rodents more accessible on this cutbank for the hawk? That seemed like an obvious answer. But was it too easy? What if I cruised around and checked other south or east facing slopes? Would I find Red-tailed Hawks there as well? Or perhaps the hawk was just perched in the sun out of the wind. Wait. There wasn't any wind, was there? It's remarkably easy to become more aware of one's surroundings even in the first seconds after formulating a hypothesis to my question. Here was something to investigate in my area.

2. During the first half of the Twentieth century birders were quite used to the idea that most species in their neighbourhoods had life histories that lacked substantial details. Today we are still ignorant about many details of a bird's life. If you decide to go beyond identification, work on the basics like how birds, even common species, feed, interact with others, display aggression, avoid predation, communicate, roost, etc. Carrying your studies into the breeding season you can observe and note how species court, form pairs, built nests, lay and incubate eggs, and care for their young,

One of the mysteries in my yard - House Sparrows will bathe when water is available, seemingly regardless of cool winter weather. The very wet female is standing on a lens of ice that took up at least 90% of the bird bath! Not only do House Sparrows bathe in ice cold water, but will do so  near the end of the afternoon before going to roost. Vernon, B.C. 12 Dec. 2014. Photo by C. Siddle

Good basic observational work can be done by the average birder if he/she is objective, unassuming, and keeps careful notes. Margaret Morse Nice (1883-1974) became the pin-up girl of this movement after she wrote a two volume life history of the Song Sparrow. Truth be told, Ms. Nice was no ordinary person. She had done graduate work in ornithology prior to becoming a housewife when her husband joined the faculty of the Ohio State medical school. However, the point is that amateurs without degrees in zoology or ornithology have made great contributions to the life histories of North American birds. Check out the 26 volumes of Arthur Cleveland Bent's Life Histories of North American Birds originally published by the Smithsonian and now available as Dover reprints in second hand bookstores. Bent (1866-1968), a successful businessman, was a true amateur. He contributed observations about birds in 1901. Accepting no salary Arthur Bent wrote the life histories of hundreds of species incorporating the observations of thousands of birdwatchers.

Northern Shrike. How exactly does this species go about procuring a meal? Is it a perch and wait predator or does it actively seek out its target? Reifel Refuge, Ladner, B.C. 24 Dec. 2014. Photo by C. Siddle. 

Late winter with its lack of distractions could be a good time to begin your own investigations into a species' life history. Do some background reading (Bent is a good place to start) and never give up because some aspect that you want to investigate is already "known". Birds adapt to local conditions. Your local birds may be acting in a different way that has never been described before.

Don't let fashion dictate. These days the words life histories are hardly spoken anymore. The emphasis in zoology is elsewhere. Many contemporary biologists appear to work with keyboards more than they do with binoculars. However, The need for basic life history is just as important as it always has been. If in the future we hope to save species from local extirpation or extinction we will need to know as much as possible about species' requirements.

3. If you keep feeders in your yard, I encourage you to go beyond the mere list of the species that are present. What are the maximum single sighting counts of each species? What time in the day does each species first visit the feeder? Does that schedule hold true in bad weather as well? Describe some patterns of dominance between species. Draw how you feel when you see a new species. Just kidding about that last suggestion.

4. Establish a walking route and keep a census of the species seen and heard during your walks. See my post about Star Road for an example. Try varying the times of your walks to detect patterns of bird activity. Every fourth census, try walking backwards to see what you're missing. Again, kidding.

5. Instead of getting to know one species well, get to know one place well. It may be a woodlot, a park, a pond... Start with habitat, if you like. Identify the conifers, and when they leaf out, the deciduous plants. Record as best you can the distribution of plant species. Record which birds forage and breed in which parts of the place.

6. When all else fails, take a long weekend trip to a bird rich area like Boundary Bay or Tsawwassan. For the price of gas, a hotel and a few meals out you can experience the spectacle of thousands of waterbirds, birds of prey and wintering passerines in places like Boundary Bay Regional Park, Blackie Spit, White Rock and Reifel Island.

7. As a very last resort, post an observation, idea, or decision on the local email birding group. Being a fractious bunch, male birders will respond with their two bits worth and someone is bound to disagree with you and say so via a  group post and so the battlelines are drawn. Everyone and his uncle will pile on, on one side or the other. The posts pile up electronically, days past as verbal volleys are fired, women, sensible creatures that they are, stand back and shake their heads in disbelief, while the men folk pronounce. And so time passes, winter eases into spring, migrants return and life goes on.

An eBird contributor sounds off about a local eBird reviewer. Virginia Rail. Dawson Creek, B.C. June 2014. Photo by C. Siddle

Note - If you are interested in studying nature beyond identification I recommend that you check out the Biodiversity Centre for Wildlife Studies www.wildlife.org. Mailing address: 3825 Cadboro Bay Road, PO Box 55053 Victoria, B.C. V8N 6L8. BCFWS publishes twice annually a wonderful magazine, Wildlife Afield: A Journal of British Columbia Natural History.