Dave Ingram's Natural History Blog

On this last day of 2009 I thought it would be fitting to share a series of the typically grey skies that we experience here on the coast of British Columbia in the winter. With any luck, signs of spring will be appearing in a couple of months and we’ll be experiencing blue skies again soon! This series of images was shot from the Little River/Powell River ferry.

Happy New Year!

Grey Sky #1

Grey Sky #2

Grey Sky #3

Grey Sky #4

If you’ve enjoyed this series of sky photographs make sure to check out some of the other posts at  SkyWatch Friday.

The Queen of Burnaby at the dock on the Comox side of the Little River/Powell River run.

I’ve been meaning to do the Little River Ferry Christmas Bird Count (CBC) since it was inaugurated by Guy Monty in 2003 but for one reason or another was unable to. This count is one of the few in BC that really focuses on “off shore” birds because the count circle essentially is the Strait of Georgia between Little River on Vancouver Island and Powell River on the mainland of British Columbia. It is also one of the counts that always records Ancient Murrelets and Marbled Murrelets as well as other alcids.

There are many things about the Little River Ferry count that make it very different from any other CBC that I’ve done. The late start time is one thing – my mother-in-law, an avid birder, and I joined Guy Monty and several other birders at Little River today (December 30) for the 10:00 sailing of the Queen of Burnaby. Any other CBC generally starts at sunrise, between 8:00 and 8:30 am. Obviously this count is dependent on BC Ferries’ schedule.

An intrepid group of birders scan the water from the ferry during the 2009/10 Little River Ferry Christmas Bird Count.

Most CBCs involve some driving and a great deal of stopping, getting out of a car, birding, getting back in the car, driving to the next stop, and repeat. You get the idea. The Little River Ferry CBC is a little like the luxury cruise of CBCs. Your task is to scan the strait and count birds while the ferry carries you along, no stopping or starting, you are carried to the birds. In addition, viewing from the ferry is fairly sheltered from wind and rain, although today was a pretty good day weather wise.

The group of birders is split into two teams and each takes one side of the ferry. This ensures birders will count on one side of the vessel on the first crossing, and on the other side of the vessel on the return. Both sides of the vessel are counted twice, and the highest count number for each species on each side is taken as representing the number of birds on that side of the vessel. This works much in the same way that Project FeederWatch participants count the highest number of birds that they see visiting their feeder at one time over the course of two days. It also ensures that both teams get to see all the birds possible as well as experience the weather conditions on both sides of the ferry (which may be very different depending on the prevailing wind).

We did see both of the signature species on this count as well as many others. At times it was difficult to keep up with the sheer number of birds with flocks of Ancient Murrelets, Common Murres, and Long-tailed Ducks numbering in the hundreds. In the end, the two sides combined saw 19 species of birds and an astounding 1,424 Ancient Murrelets, 653 Common Murres, and 657 Long-tailed Ducks. Marbled Murrelets were much less common, and only 13 were recorded on this count.

Here’s the complete list starting with the birds that I saw (some birds were only seen by one of the groups). Final numbers will be compiled and available on the Audubon website.

• Common Murre
• Ancient Murrelet
• Mew Gull
• Pacific Loon
• Western Grebe
• Long-tailed Duck
• Glaucous-winged Gull
• Common Loon
• Pelagic Cormorant
• Double Crested Cormorant
• Bald Eagle
• Marbled Murrelet
• Bufflehead
• Herring Gull

Second group also saw:

• Brant
• Pigeon Guillemont
• California Gull
• Thayer’s Gull
• Brandt’s Cormorant

Outside of the count circle I saw:

• Harlequin Duck
• Red-breasted Merganser
• Red-necked Grebe
• Surf Scoter
• Common Goldeneye

As we creep closer to the beginning of a New Year it’s time to review our lists of nature sightings for 2009 and ponder the possibilities for 2010. I admit that I’ve been inconsistent in my record keeping over the last couple of years – two young children under three means more emphasis on family. I used to keep a Life List of birds that I’d seen and, with several trips to Central America, eastern Canada, southwestern US, and the interior of BC, I think that I was close to 300 birds but don’t know for sure – I think that my last official tally was around 280. I know that there are more species that I could add to the list since then if I took the time to pour through my field books.

Rock Wren (Salpinctes obsoletus) - a problem bird for my new Life List. Do I include it because it I found it at Miracle Beach on October 12, 2009 and it was a rare sighting for Vancouver Island? Or do I let it go because I saw it "pre-list?"

So I have a dilemma – I’ve taken an interest in listing again and asked myself if it was really worth digging through the books, checking records and ticking the birds off a list. Back when I started it was a fairly simple process. When I first saw a new bird (or Lifer) I would write the date and location in my guide book. The challenge was keeping an accurate count. Was that Ancient Murrelet number 153 or 154? And, while I’ve already ticked a fair number of North American birds should I make this interesting and start fresh? Who really wants to go digging through old field books for the sake of a bird list? I’ve decided to start from scratch.

The next decision is what type of list to make. Many birders have both a Life List and a Year List. Keeping those lists separate is a challenge as well if you’re doing it on paper. And what about a Backyard Bird List? Since I’m also interested in other aspects of natural history perhaps a Plant Life List or a Dragonfly Life List would be fun to keep as well.

Fortunately there are several on-line solutions to these challenges. Here are a couple of services that I’d recommend. There are, of course, many others and if you use something different please let me know!

iNaturalist.org

iNaturalist.org is a place “where you can record what you see in nature, meet other nature lovers, and learn about the natural world.” This is the only site that I know of that allows you to list your observations of anything in nature – you can create specific lists of taxa like birds, plants, insects, fungi, etc. or just keep an overall Life List. Plus they have a nifty widget that you can use to show your latest observations on your blog page or website – very cool! All observations can pull an image from your linked Flickr account and locations are recorded using a Google Map.

Tips:

• Set up your taxa lists before hand if you’re interested in separating out your bird, plant, mushroom, insect, etc. observations into separate lists.
• You may be able to set up a custom regional list like “BC Plants” by creating a list that isn’t associated with any taxa and then just adding your BC plant observations to it – I’m still playing around with the lists and am not sure if this will work.
• Use this link to generate the code to create a widget for your blog.

Birdstack

I actually saw someone using Birdstack on their blog and I thought that it looked interesting. Birdstack allows you to create bird lists based on a wide range of criteria but probably the most useful to listers is the ability to create a list based on location (i.e. province or state, country, etc.) and/or time frame (i.e. a Year List) or Trip. Birdstack does have a lot of functionality built into it. Everything starts with a bird observation which is entered. Options to add a location and add a trip occur when recording this initial observation. These variables are used when creating a variety of different lists.

Birdstack provides some really cool ways to use your data. Locations can be connected to a Google Map. You can “stack” your list and to generate html code that will create a blog widget that shows your latest observations for that list. Birdstack also provides you the functionality to export your trip lists to a format that can be uploaded to eBird (run by Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audobon Society) adding your data to a massive pool of bird observations. I like that fact that I only have to enter a trip once and then export it to eBird. Very cool!

Tips:

• The observe first, list later feature of Birdstack seems counter-intuitive but it actually works really well. Take some time to think about setting up your trips and locations. For example, I use a “Backyard” location and then set up weekly observations of birds at our feeders as week long trips. My Backyard Birds list is then based on the Backyard location criteria – it sorts out my weekly entries and just adds the new birds to this list.

BUBO Listing

BUBO Listing is a world wide bird listing service based in the UK. With BUBO you create lists based on regional areas (i.e. province/state, country, world) and time frames (i.e. year, life). Once you’ve set up your list(s), inputting the data is easy and you can add your observations to multiple lists at the same time.

BUBO is a listing service – you’re just adding birds that are new to the list. A nice feature is that if the bird is already on your list when you type in its name in the data entry box it won’t show up as being available (because it is already on the list). I’m not sure, but I think that if you’re adding birds to multiple lists and one of them has a species recorded but the others don’t BUBO won’t allow you to add the species until the list with the bird already recorded is deselected.

One of the cool features of BUBO is that you can compare your standing against any of the 1100+ current members of BUBO in a variety of lists – totals are updated when you enter your observations. In addition, BUBO also provides a blog widget that creates the html code that allows you to post your latest observations and current totals of up to three lists on your website.

Tips:

• If you’ve already set up a provincial list and inputted records into it and then decide to create a country list you can import the existing provincial records into the new list when you set it up.
• Make sure that you’ve selected all the lists that you want to add your records to when you’re entering your data – it can be confusing to find out which birds weren’t added to a missed list after data entry, especially if your list is long.

So there you have it – three (well four if you count eBird) ways to add some listing fun to your nature outings in the New Year. Get out there and get listing!

And yes, regretfully, the Rock Wren is not yet on my list. Fortunately this gives us a good excuse to plan a road trip to the Okanagan.

One of the things that impressed me at Buttertubs Marsh last week was the endless stretches of Cattail (Typha latifolia). At this time of year, the leaves of this plant are a pale brown – new green leaves will emerge in the spring. The flowers, which we generally see as a brown “hot-dog” shape on the end of a stalk were in the process of disintegrating. Some still retained their form while others were pulled apart and starting to release seeds.

A close-up of a Cattail (Typha latifolia) spike showing the seeds.

I’m sure that many of us have childhood memories (or in my case, from last week) of pulling apart a cattail and letting the seeds go in the wind. Cattail spikes consist of both male and female flowers. The female flowers are at the bottom of the spike and they are what forms the firm brown “cat’s tail.” Wind plays an important role in the dispersal of the nutlets and long slender hairs on the seeds serve to loft them into the air. The 1 mm long nutlets also float so seeds can be dispersed by both wind and water.

The seeds of Cattail (Typha latifolia) are designed to be dispersed by wind and water.

Cattail provides excellent habitat for birds like Marsh Wrens and Red-winged Blackbird (both of which I saw at Buttertubs on that day) and food for a number of mammals including Muskrat. The thick starchy rhizomes are edible (I remember eating one raw in Boy Scouts as part of a survival food demonstration) and can be made into a flour. The young green shoots are edible raw or steamed and the pollen can be ground into flour. A versatile plant, the long narrow leaves can be woven and many coastal First Nations peoples made mats, capes, hats, blankets and bags out of them. The seed fluff was used to stuff pillows, dressing wounds and spun with dog’s wool into blankets. The fluff was also used as an absorbent material for diapers. Good to know if you’ve got two young children who are still in diapers!

The slowly disintegrating spike of the Cattail (Typha latifolia).

Before rushing out this spring to harvest the cattails in your local marsh take a couple of things into consideration. The young leaves of Yellow Iris (Iris pseudacorus) look similar to those of young Cattail. The rhizomes of Yellow Iris are toxic.

Also consider where you’re harvesting. Cattails have been used extensively as a form of phytoremediation, and accumulate a variety of pollutants in their tissues. In that sense they’re great to have around because they can remove pollutants like arsenic, phosphorus, and even pharmaceuticals. Not so good if you’re eating one that has concentrated these toxins.

Finally, wetlands are sensitive ecosystems and cattails are an important part of that ecosystem. Over harvesting could seriously damage a fragile environment and where would that leave the creatures of the marsh? Perhaps it’s just best to enjoy Cattails as they are.

If you’re interested in exploring the world in more detail consider the close-up perspectives presented by Macro Monday.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Join Dave Ingram for an audio podcast featuring winter birdwatching at Buttertubs Marsh in Nanaimo, British Columbia. This episode of Discovering Nature takes place at a great spot for both birds of the thicket and birds of the marsh. Buttertubs is surround on all sides by suburbs so the marsh is a natural refuge for all sorts of bird life. The open water is normally busy with ducks and the blackberry and hawthorn thickets are productive for sparrows.

Highlight birds on this walk include several Marsh Wrens, an Anna’s Hummingbird, and a whole host of sparrows. Ducks were few in number due to the recent cold weather which has meant that much of the water has been frozen over. However, there were several beautiful Hooded Mergansers, a Common Merganser, a couple of Bufflehead and a handful of Mallards. A complete list of birds seen during the podcast is available at Birding at Buttertubs.