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31 March 2018

eBird works

Study shows that eBird data is actually pretty useful and just as accurate as professional studies. I knew it, I told ya so.

Time for professionals to use it more often. And while we're at it, let's keep getting all that historical data from people's journals and notebooks into eBird.  It's worth it.


It also talks a bit about the decline in common species.


25 March 2018

Pine heading back

Curlews returning?

Yay!  First movement of the return of the Skookumchuck Prairie IBA Long-billed Curlews returning from their wintering grounds in California.


Pine was the first of the satellite-tagged curlews to head south last year.  SHE left Skookumchuck 21st of June 2017 and headed to Enterprise, Oregon for a bit.  Then, after another couple of days stop near Arok, Oregon, she headed over Nevada for California, arriving closer to where she wanted to be for the winter, which was near Cimarron, Calif., on 27 June 2017.

She's been hanging pretty close to either side of Hanford since then.  Now, she's heading back!  Where will she go?  Will she return here or go somewhere else!

Who will be next?  Mojo was the next to leave Skookumchuck last July. Then Solar. Then Argyle.  Will they reverse their chronology?

There is still a foot of snow on the fields close to my home.  In the Kootenay River valley bottom the snow is a bit thinner, but not by much!




23 March 2018

Robin Junco flip

I perceived we were having an unusual influx of Dark-eyed Junco this spring so I generated some eBird charts to double check.

Sure enough, there are a lot of them all of a sudden and this is quite different from last year.

With this year, 2018 on the left, and last year on the right, we can see there's been a total flip of numbers of Juncos compared to Robins.  AND they both have arrived (according to eBird reports) a bit earlier.  Mind you, we did not get the huge late dumps of snow this year as we did last year.  Still, it is mostly road edges and bare spots under trees that are providing habitat.

This makes me very happy - that there are lots of Juncos.  There has been a darth of them in the fall the last couple of years so perhaps this bodes well for the population.

I loved watching them below my living room window this morning, just feet away, no binos (or "goggles" as the RDEK planner called them the other night at a Wasa OCP open house) required.  How they could find last year's salsify seeds, minus parachute, in between the stems of creeping Thyme boggles my mind.  Then, one was actually singing from its perch on my orange honeysuckle - a rare treat.

Happy birding!


06 March 2018

Ponderosa Silhouette



I have made a silhouette of one of the Lewis’ Woodpecker wildlife trees on Skookumchuck Prairie IBA which you can use as a photoshop brush or whatever you wish.

Link to possibly better resolution image.