Dec. 12/08 - Wintertime Blues
For many, December is a festive month. For some it is a time to give thanks to the tradition and meaning of Christmas; for others, it is a time to celebrate family and the joy of life; but for some, there is no reason to celebrate at all - unemployment, poverty, disease, vandalism, crime, war, the destruction of the earth ... It's difficult to celebrate when you think of all those problems. The saddest part is that most are man-made and can probably be man-solved. Just think of all the problems we could solve if only the time, money, and resources spent on war were directed towards improving the human condition and slowing down the destruction of the earth.
What's all this got to do with birds you might ask? The answer is simple. There's nothing that we do that doesn't affect the rest of the world. Just think of the effect that war has on birds and nature. How many birds are destroyed simply because they are in the line of fire? How much habitat is destroyed? These are just the direct effects. What about the destruction of the environment to get raw materials for bombs, guns, tanks, and the other materials of war? What about the loss of human resources wasted in wartime activities versus peacetime activities? Even much of our peacetime activities are more destructive than necessary, but I won't get into that.
My personal discomforts are trivial compared to the problems of many, but there's no point beating myself up for something I can't control. The bird scene has been very quiet since the now-famous Black-tailed Gull. It didn't quite reach the notoriety of the White Ravens of Qualicum in June, but it made many Island papers including the Times-Colonist and was reported provincially and nationally by CHEK and CBC, respectively. As I've mentioned many times, the media is interested in nature and environmental news, and I had no problem getting the various papers to carry the story. Of course, they don't pay anything, but I do it for the birds. It's important to focus attention on the birds whenever we can. Most people have no clue about the birds in our environment so it's incumbent upon those who know to get the word out.
At the birder's level, thanks to David and Adele from the metropolis of Cumberland for their sighting and report of the Mountain Bluebird a few days ago at Little River. Timely book orders from Blue Heron Books in Comox and Coho Books in Campbell River gave me the opportunity to check out the Bluebird on Dec. 11. It's always a bonus to have an interesting bird to look for when I make the journey up the Island. Coincidentally, the Bluebird sighting was approximately a year from the three that I reported last year in Nanoose, and those birds stayed until the end of March. Aside from the Mountain Bluebird, I'm not aware of any other birds of interest reported and confirmed in the past two weeks.
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Bird of the Week - Mountain Bluebird
Just as Dave and Adele reported, the female Mountain Bluebird was hawking insects from the maintanace yard fence adjacent to the beach. It would fly into air, gather in a few insects and return to its perch just like a flycatcher. The heavy overcast skies made photography difficult, but the cooperativeness of the bird made it all worthwhile. At ISO 640 my shutter speed was 1/20th of a second. It was a good thing that the bird sat quite still when it was perched.
To compound the poor lighting problem, the bird spent most of its perching time on man-made metal structures like the barb-wire, fence post, steel girder, signpost, and even my car roof. When it landed on my car I wondered if it were hinting at getting a ride south, but it soon flew off to hawk a few more flies. In an hour it only landed on a natural object once, and that is shown on my title photo at the beginning of this journal.
One of its favorite perches was on a fence post cap just east of a stack of metal girders. Another was the sign at at the parking lot. When I walked along the fenceline, it would fly over to the sign. When I returned to my car, it would fly back to the fence post.
After an hour waiting for some better lighting, I decided it was time to head for Campbell River. I thought the Bluebird would be happy to see me leave, but just as I started up the car, I was pleasantly surprised to see the Bluebird fly over from the fence to the sign right in front of me as if to say, "Please take me with you."
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Close-up of a Loon - One of my usual stops during the winter is Sebastion Park in Lantzville. The steep drop-off from the sandstone rocks seems to attract a variery of birds. It is also the winter home of the Lantzville Spotted Sandpiper, and a good place to catch Ralph Hocken if you want to chat about birds and photography. By the way, I saw Ralph there a couple of days ago, and he informed me that the Spottie was back. I haven't seen much there lately, but last week when it was quite windy, a Pacific Loon popped up right in front of me. It was too close to get the whole bird in the frame so I had to settle for a quick head shot before it dove again. I had the exposure comp set at -0.7 but that wasn't enough. I'll go -1.0 next time.
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Is All Forgiven? - Because of its unsavory reputation for terrorizing native birds and taking over favored nesting spots, I've always harbored an unhealthy dislike for the House Sparrow. I say "unhealthy" because it's not healthy to go around disliking too many things. Rather than dislike the bird, I could just pretend that it doesn't exist, and ignore it completely. But, when you see it at every rest stop in the U.S. and almost everywhere else you go, it's hard to ignore. The net result of my attitude was that I rarely wasted the effort to photograph the bird.
However, I've re-evaluated the situation and decided that I shouldn't be blaming the bird for anything. After all, it wasn't the bird's fault that it is on our continent. As usual, it was the fault of a few imbeciles who thought it would be jolly good fun to colonize our land with old country birds and let them claim the land just as the colonists did with the indigeous people. (They also had another lame reason called pest control.) I think it's known as "expropriation by population" or something like that. Anyway, two items conspired to change my mind. First, I was amused last year to see that the House Sparrow was included in a book of the world's 100 "Remarkable Birds" by Stephen Ross(HarperCollins). Yesterday I read Ken Kaufmann's introduction in "100 birds to See Before You Die." The House Sparrow isn't one of the featured birds, but in his introduction, Ken pays homage to the bird bas one that should have been included because of its resilience, adaptability and ability to survive in a multiplicity of environments. Well, what's good enough for Ken is good enough for me, so here's a male House Saprrow I saw at Buttertubs Marsh last week.
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A Teal With Appeal - No one can argue that the male Green-winged Teal isn't an attractive bird. I love the variety of colours and the intricate striping on the feathers. This photo almost in the dark at Courtenay's Airpark really doesn't do it any justice, but as you can see, I'm short on pictures for this journal. I'm trying to make up with an abundance of rhetoric, but I have that sinking feeling just like GM. After all these years I still don't have a photo of the male GW-Teal that I really like.
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Commoners - It's always a challenge to get good pictures of the Common Mergansers. Don't bother if it's a dark overcast day like today. I got some interesting poses, but the results are simply dull.
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Salmon Fest - A Common sight around esturaries like French Creek are Bald Eagles dining on the carcasses of spawned out salmon. There must have been enough salmon for all the gulls as there was no interest in the intact carcass until the eagle arrived.
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Postering - I've always had the idea of producing an educational poster to distribute to schools and nature centres like Swan Lake, but the concept has never emerged from the cerebral crevices of my mind. I'm not suggesting anything has changed; however, I've just gone through the process of designing and producing a poster for the Fairwinds Audubon Program of which I am a member. The posters are 42"x 32", and I think they are very attractive. I can visualize a slightly larger modification titled "Vancouver Island Birds" with about 100 different Island species. I'm willing to design and get the poster printed if I can find a sponsor (or sponsors) who is (are) willing to cover the production expenses. In return, they get sponsorship credit on the poster and the satisfaction of promoting some environmental education for our future citizens. Sounds good doesn't it? We'll see what happens. Do you know anyone who hasn't suffered too much with this recession?
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