Hi Tweets,

Ken Klimko wrote:
>On Sunday September 14 and the following Monday, we had the good fortune
>to take a mini-pelagic on the BC Ferry, The Queen of Naniamo, to Mayne
>Island (one of the gulf islands bordering Active Pass) with Michael
>Price.

I'm going to take the liberty to append some remarks to Ken's post.

For literally decades, we Vancouver BC birders have been taking the BC Ferry
from the Tsawwassen Terminal to Victoria BC at the S end of Vancouver Island
and plowing through massive (000's) of--depending on season--Pacific Loons
(PALO), Brandt's Cormorants (BRCO), and Bonaparte's Gulls (BOGU) in Active
Pass, the constricted, double-dogleg channel between Mayne and Galiano
Islands. If one is one the ferry, one can always distinguish the birders
from the more casual sightseers as they run from side to side of the ship
trying to scan through thousands of seabirds in the migrational chokepoint.
Imagine trying to scan a large flock of shorebirds from a car moving at 10
knots (12--15 mph) through the flock and you'll get an idea of the
constraints. Everyone hates the fact that the ferry won't slow down to give
birders time to scan the flocks (of *course* the world revolves around us
birders; why hasn't the rest of the world caught on yet? '-).

So this year, I got finally got sufficiently exasperated of the Active Pass
Sprint to wonder what it would be like to go aboard as a foot-passenger,
find a spot on one of the two Islands and scan the damn flocks at leisure.
Revolutionary concept, duhhhh. Ken and his son, Kris, whose wicked eyesight
found nearly all the goodies on Sunday's trip BTW, were up for it, and after
some discussion we decided to check out Georgina Point on Mayne Island at
the eastern entrance to the Pass on the south side.

>From this point (which has the Active Pass Lighthouse on it BTW), one has a
270-degree view including much of Georgia Strait, the big tide-rips off the
Pass entrance and a view of the Pass itself as far as the first dogleg a
couple of kilometers to the W. Thinking was, that though very little
birdlife is in the Strait proper (too little to eat, "a birding desert"
according the seabird expert, Mike Force), birds both inshore and occasional
pelagics migrate along and over it, particularly along its edges for most
birds, but what pelagic species--the odd Sooty Shearwater, Fork-tailed
Storm-Petrel, Sabine's Gull--there are migrate usually closer to the middle
but that's not a rule: people have seen them from land as well; by setting
up there, we'd be perfectly situated to spot any that flew by the mouth of
the Pass. We'd also see whatever was attracted to the rather violent tidal
upwellings in the Pass and extending out from it into the Strait. We'd also
be able to see whatever was moving through the Pass. Turned out that there
was another aspect of migration that, in our concentration on seabirds, we
overlooked: passerine migration.

Well, though we didn't see any screaming rarities from it (in a total
viewing time of a couple-three hours), it's got 'Prime Birding Spot' written
all over it. What we did get--and it should have been glaringly evident from
the geography--was a slug of passerines in the trees around the lighthouse,
where there's a little park with mature second-growth doug-fir and Pacific
madrone/arbutus--Anna's Hummingbird, anyone?--with salal groundcover (the
Himalayan blackberry seems not have discovered this island yet), including a
few small stands around the lighthouse. Migrant trap. It's the natural
landfall for passerines migrating by island-hopping down the E side of the
Strait. We did see the migration of PALO, scoters (mostly Surf, a few
White-winged, though most of those were on the mainland side, with a few
pintails migrating in the scoter flocks--they're not choosy) and American
Widgeon. Though a large flock of Bonaparte's Gulls were working the
tide-rips just as our ferry arrived on the other side of the Pass, they got
cleaned out by a juv Peregrine, and went W out of sight into their major
staging area, the bay in the second dogleg near the western entrance.

How to get there: get on the Gulf Island ferry at Tsawwassen BC (or the
Schwartz Bay Terminal if coming from Vancouver Island). Coming from Tswn, it
stops first at Sturdies Bay on Galiano Island on the other side of the Pass,
then goes through the Pass, turns S and docks at Village Bay. Call BC
Ferries at 1-888-223-3779 to see if/when you need to reserve space for your
car and the fares (sliding fares; pretty crazed system, but that's the
game). If you decide to stay over, the island's lousy with inns and B&B's.
If you stay at the Mayne Inn, tell the manager you're birders: he's
absolutely unconvinced that birders could conceivably be a potential market
during his slack period (anything but summer).

As you drive out of the small terminal and up the hill you'll be on Village
Bay Road (and look for a realty office with so-so Mayne Island maps in the
outside wall-holders. If you want a short hit of the island's history (i.e.,
despite its appearance, it was once covered with orchards, not trees, and
was an important anchorage/provisioning area for sailing ships between
Vancouver and the open ocean. And I'm still curious about "the 30-40 small
hawks" that he saw on his property once). Stay on that about 4-5 km (2-3
mi), turn L onto Fernhill, go a short distance down the hill and turn R--at
the Springwater Restaurant (pretty good eats there and good view of the
Pass, especially the BOGU flock, from the patio)--onto Georgina Point Road.
Stay on it for about 5-6 km until you arrive at the gate to the small park
around the lighthouse. The park gate doesn't open until 9 AM and closes at 5
PM, so I'd suggest if you want to do any early-morning birding from the
point, you try to arrange something with the light-keeper (wonderful term!)
or the property owners either side of it: as we discovered, there's no
public access to the point except during those hours, though there is a
public access at the end of Oyster Bay Road just a little to the S of the
lighthouse where you'll have a good view of the Strait and the E entrance to
the Pass.

The other major seabirding site--the Bonaparte Gull/Sterna tern staging area
off Helen Point--has no overtly public entrance, nor is it even officially
public land, being sequestered for the local First Nations people. When we
asked where we should make a courtesy call to the local Band Office to ask
permission to enter, we were told there was no one living on the point and
that, unofficially and traditionally, the principle of commonage applied.
There used to be a publicly-accessible entrance but apparently a pretty
bloodyminded (Brit expression meaning deliberately unco-operative;
dog-in-the-manger) guy bought the house on whose property is the trail-head
to the point and barred it, forcing people to circumvent his property. Find
out how to access the path to the point from someone on the island. We
didn't have time to check it out, but just off Helen Point is the bay
containing the massive (000's) flock of Bonaparte's Gulls and whatever else
happens to be in with them. From trail-head to the point is a walk of
between an hour and hour and a half, and the trail follows the shoreline.

Ken made an interesting observation: that only a tiny number of the
thousands of BOGU we were seeing were juvs whereas most of the birds across
the Strait were overwhelmingly juv/Basic 1 birds. And we did see a flock of
Def Basic adults, first acquired so far out that they had to be flying over
from the Mainland, fly in from the Strait into the Pass. So much for
following coastlines, at least where BOGU's concerned. Another small piece
of the puzzle.

We got stranded overnight when BC Ferries cancelled the evening sailing we'd
reserved space on when an early-winter gale howled in a month early. No
worries, I told Ken and Kris: in birding, things like this usually turn out
to have happened for a reason. Crossing the Strait next morning, about
halfway out and in no-glare muted sunlight, an adult Sabine's Gull flew
toward the ferry, set up for a minute or so on the bow-shock wave a hundred
feet or so from where we stood near the bow. Thank heavens for the oddity of
Sabine's plumage/molt sequencing that has them retaining a perfect Alternate
plumage until they've completed their migration S to their wintering waters
off the coast of S America. A lifer for K&K, another fine memory of this
always-stunning gull for me that I'll be happy to dust off twenty years from
now.

On an esthetic aside, I guess one of the peripheral reasons why we locally
hold this beautiful little gull in such high regard, almost--and I'm only
halfway kidding--adoration, sometimes approaching the idealised and the
angelic is that--as the First-year and molting birds are mostly on winter
territory--we rarely ever see a scruffy Sabine's (when we get to see them at
all), just birds in the full glamor of their definitive plumages, striking
alternate adult or subtler juvenile. If we saw more of them in teeshirts and
cutoffs, so to speak, I'm sure we wouldn't confer such perfection onto them.

When the southwesterly gale was really getting down to work just before
sundown, we went up the gravel road--part-driven, mostly walked, with some
steep sections--to the top of Mt. Parke, where there's a massive radar dish,
the highest point on Mayne Is at, rough guess and I'm not good at this,
about 200-250 meters (600-750 ft). Stunning view of the Gulf/San Juan Island
archipelagoes, Vancouver Island, the distant BC and Washington State
mainlands. I'd like to have seen the Olympics from there but the incoming
weather grue obscured them. Novel, too, seeing small birds hurled by the
wind like little brown bullets past one's head to take shelter in the trees
at the top that were in windshadow spots. At the top, we also watched a
Vaux's Swift flying like mad into the wind but slowly and inexorably being
forced backward (if one knew the windspeed and the rate of retreat, this
would give a rough value for the swift's top speed, I'd imagine).

Here is what we saw and heard, to the best of memory.

Pacific Loon small flocks, southbound
Common Loon
Red-necked Grebe 3 juv
Fork-tailed Storm-Petrel 1 mid-Strait, MP only
Double-crested Cormorant
Pelagic Cormorant
Great Blue Heron
Mallard
American Wigeon
Surf Scoter commonest migrant in Strait
White-winged Scoter
Turkey Vulture relatively common nester there
Osprey 1
Sharp-shinned Hawk 1 juv male
Red-tailed Hawk 1 ad
Peregrine Falcon 1 juv chasing BOGU
Black Turnstone voice-only contact
Parasitic Jaeger 2? Light-morph ad
Bonaparte's Gull 3,000-4,000
Heermann's Gull
Mew Gull
Ring-billed Gull
California Gull
Glaucous-winged Gull
*Sabine's Gull* 1 Alt-plumaged ad, mid-Strait
Common Tern 3
Arctic Tern** 1 ad
Rhinoceros Auklet
Rock Dove
Band-tailed Pigeon
Vaux's Swift 2, one westbound in mid-Strait
Belted Kingfisher
Red-breasted Sapsucker 2
Northern Flicker
Pileated Woodpecker
Pacific-slope Flycatcher 1 voice-only
Barn Swallow
Steller's Jay
Northwestern Crow
Common Raven
Chestnut-backed Chickadee
Bushtit
Red-breasted Nuthatch
Bewick's Wren
Golden-crowned Kinglet
Hermit Thrush 2
Swainson's Thrush 1
American Robin
Cedar Waxwing
European Starling evening roost flock ~300
Orange-crowned Warbler
Yellow-rumped Warbler 1 Bsc Audubon's, top of Mt Parke
Black-throated Gray Warbler 1 m, pre-Basic Molt
Common Yellowthroat
Spotted Towhee
Svannah Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Lincoln's Sparrow
Dark-eyed Junco breeds there
House Finch
American Goldfinch

cormorant sp. poss Brandt's
raptor sp. Merlin or Sharp-shinned Hawk
jaeger sp. 1*

*seen for just seconds at long distance in the W entrance by Kris and MP,
large build and complete breast-band suggest Pomarine Jaeger.

**a skinny pale long-winged Sterna tern giving a typical call. Whereas
Common Tern's call is usually a disyllabic 'ki-*yarrrrrr*', the Arctic's is
higher-pitched, with a somewhat trilling quality and almost always
transposes the phrasing and emphasis: '*keeeer*-ya' (thanks to the British
birder, Frank Walker, for pointing out this feature while we were trying to
locate visually a calling Arctic Tern in a flock of Common Terns at
Esquimault Lagoon just W of Victoria BC, and did so a few minutes later).

>Certainly a worthwhile trip and I wouldn't hesitate to try it again.

Yessir! The short time we were there little plumbs its possibilities.

Michael Price The Sleep of Reason Gives Birth to Monsters
Vancouver BC Canada -Goya
mprice at mindlink.net