LevelsBirder

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My wife Kay and I flew from Gatwick to Calgary, where we met our two Canadian birding friends - a married couple. Together we travelled 100 miles to Brooks, a small town in the southeast of Alberta. Here, we were to take part, with some 45 birders, in a big ‘May Bird Count’ over the weekend of the 20th and 21st. The 20 mile count circle was centred on the town, and we gathered at nearby Tillebrook Provincial Park campground where the count headquarters was located. The habitat in the count circle was mostly short-grass prairie, interspersed with natural reservoirs, lakes, marshes, sloughs (locally pronounced as ‘slews’), irrigation ditches and scattered small areas of woodland. The count circle was split into zones and our car load had Zone 8, or Rolling Hills (East). We set off at 07:45 on the first morning, returning at 18:30, having covered about 65% of our zone, finishing the rest the following day. We had to count and log every single bird that we saw or heard, at times making reasonable estimates. The data was entered on to a spreadsheet and all the species totals were passed to the organiser at the end of the count.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My wife Kay (left front) and some birding friends at a mid-day meet, during our first day of  the count.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Towering cliffs along the Bow River, home to a pair of Golden Eagles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We four managed a total of 128 species, of which some of the highlights, for a British birder, were: 5 species of grebe; 139 American White Pelicans; a colony of at least 60 Black-crowned Night Herons, nesting on the ground on small reed covered islands; 30 Lesser Scaup; 14 Buffleheads; a Golden Eagle feeding a downy chick at its cliff-ledge eyrie along the Bow River; 21 Northern (Hen) Harriers; 16 Swainson’s Hawks; 2 Ferruginous Hawks; 2,580 Black-bellied (Grey) Plovers; Spotted, Baird’s, Semi-palmated and Stilt Sandpipers; 6 Long-billed Curlews; 34 Marbled Godwits; 5 Long-billed Dowitchers, and 26 Wilson’s Phalaropes; unfortunately, most shorebird migration had passed through the region early this spring. Others were: 4 Great-horned Owls, including a female with a small chick; finding 3 Burrowing Owls, a pair and a single, at two old gopher burrows – these owls are now very scarce in Canada; 3 Loggerhead Shrikes; 152 Horned (Shore) Larks; a Rock Wren – miles from its usual habitat; 32 Swainson’s Thrushes, but only one Grey-cheeked Thrush; 6 Brown Thrashers; 6 Sprague’s Pipits; Yellow, Yellow-rumped and Blackpoll Warblers (too early for most warblers); 27 Lark Buntings; 10 McCown’s and 55 Chestnut-collard Longspurs, and 4 Baltimore Orioles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Riverine prairie wetlands

Not much time for digiscoping during fairly hectic counting, so I've also used a few digital video grabs taken during my previous two trips to this part of Canada.

 

 

 

The quintessential American Robin, which takes the place of our British Blackbird (digiscope photo).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Burrowing Owl outside an old gopher burrow (a quick digibino photo).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Great Horned Owl - a pale morph (digiscope photo).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A male Yellow Warbler (digiscope photo)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Video grab)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A small thrush, about the size of a British Robin (video grab).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A male (Video Grab)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Video grab)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Drake Harlequin Ducks, seen on the Bow River (a scanned slide).

 

After a successful count weekend we travelled back with our friends to stay for a week at their home just north of Calgary, adjacent to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. They were our guides during this time and showed us most of the local birds, including two that were new for me on my world list: White-faced Ibis at Frank's Lake and MacGillivray's Warbler at Exshaw in the Bow Valley. I'd seen the very similar Mourning Warbler before, in Ontario, and thought that MacGillivray's would be just a skulking as they both feed on and just above the ground in thick vegetation. So what a nice surprise to find that newly arrived territorial males sing from favourite perches at eye-level or even slightly higher and are much easier to see at this time. We had great views (or interviews, as our friends called it) of three or four singing males.

Having said a fond farewell to our Canadian friends, we spent the last week of our holiday touring through Banff and Jasper National Parks in a rented 20ft campervan, taking a brief diversion into British Columbia to try and see some reported bears in Wells Gray Provincial Park. During this later part of our trip we increased our birding list to 154 species, when the highlights were: close views of an adult female Prairie Falcon, perched and hunting from the top of roadside utility poles; superb views of a displaying pair of Golden Eagles, so close that through my bins' I felt I could almost reach out and touch them; nesting Bald Eagles and Ospreys; Rufous and Ruby-throated Hummingbirds; Clark's Nutcrackers; 28 Mountain Bluebirds, including many superb males; Townsend's Solitaire; Varied Thrush; Rose-breasted and Black-headed Grosbeaks; Spotted Towhee and 11 species of sparrows and buntings. We also saw a few mammals, of which pride of place goes to 3 Black Bears; plus 2 Moose; several Elk; many Pronghorn Antelopes, White-tailed and Mule Deer; Rocky Mountain Sheep; Mountain Goats; 2 Coyotes; 1 Racoon; Snowshoe Hares; American Red Squirrels; Richardson's, Columbian and Golden-mantled Ground Squirrels; Least Chipmunks and and 10+ Mourning Cloak (Camberwell Beauty) Butterflies.

 

All these photos were taken with a 3MP Nikon Coolpix 990

 

 

 

 

The foothills of the Rockies, where we searched without any luck for Blue Grouse.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vermillion Lakes in Banff National Park

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A closer view of one of the three lakes at Vermillion Lakes. Here there were breeding Bald Eagles - the same pair for the past 16 years (see photo page)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Four-seater gondola cars, we took one of these to the top of Sulphur Mountain at 7,500 feet... just slightly stomach turning if you looked down!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The gondola station at the top of Sulphur Mountain. From here there was a 1 km boardwalk to the old weather station at the summit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A view from the top of Sulphur Mountain, with the greens of Banff Golf Course far below.

 

 

 

 

 

Lake Louise, world famous and rightly so. The most visited lake in the Rockies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunwapta Falls, along the Icefields Parkway (highway). As you can imagine the noise was deafening!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The deep ravine, just below the Falls.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of many scenes along the Icefields Parkway. The colour of the many lakes is due to different minerals suspended in the water since the Ice Age receded.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bow Lake, near the summit of the Icefields Parkway and still mostly frozen at this time of year. The red dot on the distant shoreline is Num-Ti-Jah Lodge, a small hotel that gives some idea of the overall scale.

 

 

Most of these are 'digiscope' photos, taken with a 3MP Nikon Coolpix 990 camera attached to a Kowa 20x wide x 82mm telescope.

 

 

 

 

A female Elk in Banff N. Park.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A male Elk in the same place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mountain Goats in Jasper N. Park.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rocky Mountain Sheep ( a ram) in Banff N. Park.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A close up of this feisty ram.

 

 

 

 

 

This feisty ram was why I got an unexpected opportunity to photograph a nesting Osprey. We’d stopped at a pull-in overlooking a lake and were watching a fishing Osprey when, with sudden shouts of alarm, two cyclists came around the bend and said a feeding ram had tried to butt them as they passed. Deciding to investigate, I approached to a safe distance and took some photos. The single carriageway here wound up a steep hill overlooking the railway and the lake, and as I sat on the low barrier wall that prevented traffic from straying over the edge I suddenly heard the loud ‘pyeep’ call of an Osprey and swivelling around saw a bird with a fish, which it carried to an occupied nest on an old utility pole directly below us and only 50 metres away. The upshot was that the sitting bird paid no heed to any of the tourists who stopped to get a photo of the ram, nor of the train that passed her nest, letting out many loud whistle blasts as it did so, and I was able to take these photos, safe in the knowledge that I was not causing her any disturbance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The sitting birds partner (male?) perched on a nearby tree after bringing a fish to the nest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bald Eagle - adult, one of the nesting pair at Vermillion Lakes, Banff N. Park.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clark's Nutcracker: these were fairly common around Lake Louise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back view - showing its contrasting all white tail.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Black Bear, a cinnamon-brown individual, Wells Gray Prov. Park.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A closer view, before it walked off into the nearby forest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since our return, I've been advised by our Canadian friends that the Big May Weekend Bird Count that we took part in finally totalled 64,000 individual birds of 206 species. This was the highest overall count figure on record and the second highest ever number of species recorded.