Hi Tweets,

Reto Riesen writes:

>a Peregrine was on the UGG (grain?) building, stirring up
>Rock Doves.

You're right, Reto: the United Grain Growers (UGG) grain siloes A good site
worth watching for Gyrfalcons Falco rusticola, both wintering and passage. I
don't think the one there last spring was a fluke.

>I had a hard time to figure out my non-Double-crested Cormorants; all of
>them looked to me rather thick-necked, and finally went down as Brandt's.
>I would have liked to turn them into Pelagic's but they just didn't look
>right. Confusing.

If you can see the tails of these birds, Reto, you'll see that Brandt's
Cormorant Phalacrocorax penicillatus has, proportionally, the shortest tail
of the three mid-coast Cascadian cormorants, while the Pelagic Cormorant P.
pelagicus the longest. Ummm, if you weren't sure what they were, wouldn't
the survey results be a bit more accurate if you had listed them as
'cormorant sp.' or 'Phalacrocorax sp.'?

>Michael also wrote
>> Distressingly, *no* MARBLED MURRELETS Brachyramphus marmoratus in waters
>> where two decades ago they were common, and it's clear they've been
>> extirpated from the outer section of Burrard Inlet. The cause? logging of
>> the old-growth by the Greater Vancouver Regional District in the watersheds
>> of the GVRD's Water Districts.
>
>While I don't see why anybody would allow logging in the GVRD watersheds,

There has been has been logging in the watersheds for decades, Reto: by the
Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD) itself intensively and
extensively in the 1970's and 1980's, slightly abated in the 1990's. Their
logging and road-building in the watersheds, and the resulting erosion and
increased landslde frequency has been identified as a major cause if not the
major cause of the degradation of Vancouver's drinking-water to the point
where the same GVRD is now increasing the chlorine to unsafe levels (they've
'suggested'--i.e. warned--pregnant women from drinking Vancouver tapwater)
in our water to try and kill off such pathogens as Cryptosporidium entering
the water in much greater amounts from the loosened soil. The GVRD,
naturally, denies all the above and keeps the area closed to everyone except
when it opens it up for Potemkin-village type tours. Yeah, we may be one of
the most beautiful cities in the world, but the machine that runs it ain't
pretty.

>I am doubtful that the limited logging which took place in those
>watersheds in recent years (if any - I got the impression that the GVRD
>pushes to start logging AGAIN) would cause such a steep decline. From
>Crown Mtn, for example, I've seen this fall some roads and what I thought
>was second-growth forest in the Capilano watershed, but no clearcut
>blocks. On the other hand, further up the (Sunshine) coast, in the Caren
>range and towards Desolation sound, former Old-growth virtually
>evaporated: clearcut. Wouldn't the missing birds rather come from areas
>which have changed much more dramatically than the local watersheds?

Well, Reto, my understanding is that there was a grand total of one Marbled
Murrelet Brachyrhamphus marmoratus--that's *one*-- seen in the whole of
Burrard Inlet on this last survey, sort of a little bit down from the
hundreds which up to about ten years ago would live year-round in the Inlet,
feed here and meet their fledging young here from the forests of the GVRD
watersheds. I remember when they were a *common* bird in the Inlet at any
time of the year, Reto, and that included seeing many juvenile birds in
later summer at least until the early 1980's. I first suspected a decline in
the mid-1980's, but wasn't sure until the early 1990's. The extirpation over
the last decade of the Marbled Murrelet in Greater Vancouver is one of those
small but interesting stories that for some puzzling reason just seemed to
evoke no more than a little interest and a few perfunctory letters in the
conservation groups (one of them being the group on whose executive
committee you sit, Reto) or government agencies. And now they're gone.

As to the cause of the decline, most places that log the old-growth nesting
habitat lose their Marbled Murrelets. The GVRD has logged the old-growth
nesting habitat and Vancouver's lost its murrelets. But Vancouver BC must be
different because I've just been informed that logging in the watersheds
couldn't be a cause.

They just must have been abducted by aliens, I guess.

Michael Price
Vancouver BC Canada
mprice at mindlink.net

"She's psychic....we've decided to find it charming."
--Frasier