Mystery Underwing Moth

On the night of September 14, 2014, we surprising large numbers of a very large moth fluttering about the porch light here at Moorecroft Regional park, in Nanoose Bay, BC. Watching them for a few moments, I felt that it was a species that I couldn't recall having seen before. Later in the evening, I realized that several must have come in when I had the door open, and were now noisily bumping into lamp shades around the house. As large as they were, it didn't take long to capture them and release them outside. Curious as to the species, I photographed one, thinking I could identify it later. Well, I should have known better. After sending the photos to quite a few different people, there was no consensus as to what the species was, although Catocala semirelicta and Catocala unijuga were the most commonly suggested species. Reading about the abundance,  distribution and habitat preferences of the two moth species, it seems that semirelicta is more likely. Next time, I'll make sure and wait to release the moth AFTER it has been identified.

Hiking On Gerald Island

Yesterday I rowed out to Gerald Island, here in Nanoose. It is about 1 km out to the Gerald Island  shoreline, and takes me about 10 minutes of easy rowing in calm seas, and about 20 minutes of hard rowing in choppy seas with a contrary wind. Yesterday was fairly easy, with winds generally less than 1 knot. 

One the way out I saw all three species of cormorants and a few Harlequin Ducks on the large rock at the mouth of First Bay, here in Moorecroft Regional Park. A bit further out, was a single Western Grebe. A fly-by Rhinoceros Auklet was the only other bird of interest on the trip out, or for that matter, on the trip back. The large numbers of Pacific Loons and gulls that have been present the past few days, appeared to have moved on. Other than a few Mew, California, and Glaucous-winged Gulls feeding locally, gull numbers were way down. 

The first bird I noticed upon landing on Gerald Island, was am immature Sharp-shinned Hawk. It was in pursuit of a small flock of Pine Siskins. After giving up on catching one of these tiny finches, it flew directly to the shoreline of Vancouver Island, entering the forests of Moorecroft, somewhat below the canopy. I would see two more of this species do the exact same thing over the next two hours. I do not know how they got to Gerald Island, but I suspect they were using the Texada to Ballenas to Gerald route. The other bird of interest I spotted on Gerald Island, was a Northern Shrike, quite contentedly catching grasshoppers along the NW shore of the island. In many Octobers, the grasshoppers would be long gone by the time this migrant from the far north arrives.

Walking on Gerald is interesting. The island is only lightly forested with Douglas firs, red cedars, grand firs, arbutus and trembling aspen. An odd forest composition anywhere in BC. There is also some Rocky Mountain juniper, Saskatoon, ocean spray and Pacific crab apple in the shrub layer, which is places, is impenetrable. Rare coastal plants such as prickly pear cactus and coastal wood fern grow in fair abundance on parts of the island. For the most part though, much of the island is rock which is covered by thin grasses or lichen and moss. A small wetland dominated by red-osier dogwood sits in the center of the island, but because the vegetation is so thick, only the presence of wetland plant species and numerous mosquitos convinces one that there is any water at all on this otherwise dry and rocky island. Most of the shoreline is either sheer rock and short cliffs, or hills of steep rock, making hiking into the interior of the island difficult. There are three places to land a small boat on the island, which lead to routes to reach the center of the island, with varying degrees of difficulty. At it's highest point, it is about 175 meters high, and offers some great views of Vancouver Island, the Sunshine Coast and the surrounding Salish Sea. There is one active Bald Eagle nest on the island. I have read undocumented reports of Peregrine Falcons nesting on Gerald Island as well. I have seen no evidence of this, and decent cliff ledges are in short supply here. Turkey Vultures do nest on the island, on the ground in dense vegetation. The island is well known as a major roost site for Northwestern Crows in the winter. The actual number of crows nesting here can vary quite a bit from day to day through the winter though. With the large amount of open ground and bare rock and grass on the island, it does appear to be an attractive migration stop for the more open country species.

The only presence of mammals on the island, are the numerous runways through the grass, and scat piles from River Otters. Harbor seals and both California and Steller's Sea Lions feed in the waters around the island, but do not appear to haul out here with any regularity. Probably because there are other more appropriate haul out spots nearby.   

List of birds noted from Gerald Island on 7 October 2012:

Harlequin Duck: 8
Surf Scoter: 5
Red-breasted Merganser: 2
Common Merganser: 2
Pacific Loon: 32
Common Loon: 2
Red-necked Grebe: 1
Western Grebe: 1
Brandt's Cormorant: 5
Double-crested Cormorant: 11
Pelagic Cormorant: 9
Mew Gull: 22
California Gull: 10
Glaucous-winged Gull: 18
Northern Flicker: 5
Northern Shrike: 1
Northwestern Crow: 3
Chestnut-backed Chickadee: 11
Red-breasted Nuthatch: 5
Brown Creeper: 4
Bewick's Wren: 3
Pacific Wren: 4
Golden-crowned Kinglet: 23
Ruby-crowned Kinglet: 4
American Robin: 12
Varied thrush: 1
American Pipit: 3
Yellow-rumped Warbler: 6
Spotted Towhee: 11
Savannah Sparrow: 14
Fox Sparrow: 9
Song Sparrow: 26
White-crowned Sparrow: 5
Golden-crowned Sparrow: 22
Purple Finch: 4
Pine Siskin: 123

Nanoose Hill Hawk Watch

For many years I have been hoping to do some migration monitoring on local hills in the area between Nanaimo and Qualicum Beach. Unfortunately, I am usually away in the NE corner of BC at this time of year doing this type of research for wind energy project proposals. This year, with the economy in the toilet and the Canadian Conservative Party fascists dismantling the environmental assessment process, I find myself unemployed, and thus able to do a bit more hawk watching locally. Today, Donna and I hiked to the top of Nanoose Hill on what is known as the "Notch Trail". It is a quick slog to the top through Douglas Fir, Garry Oak and Arbutus forests, which are broken by rock outcrops near the top, offering great views to all directions but the east. We spent five hours here, starting at 9:00 and ending at 14:00. It was hot and sunny, with only a slight breeze from the north. Migration was slow, but we were thrilled to have as many as 23 Turkey Vultures above us at one point, soaring so close that we could hear them croaking at each other.
Birds recorded from Nanoose Hill Today:
Turkey Vulture: 66
Osprey: 1
Red-tailed Hawk: 2
Merlin: 1
Peregrine Falcon: 1
Glaucous-winged Gull: 3
California Gull: 3
Band-tailed Pigeon: 81
Vaux's Swift: 4
Anna's Hummingbird: 3
Hairy Woodpecker: 1
Northern Flicker: 10
Hammond's Flycatcher: 2
Hutton's Vireo: 3
Steller's Jay: 2
Common Raven: 12
Horned Lark: 1
Violet-green Swallow: 5
Chestnut-backed Chickadee: 14
Red-breasted Nuthatch: 27
Brown Creeper: 4
Bewick's Wren: 1
Winter Wren: 3
Golden-crowned Kinglet: 22
Ruby-crowned Kinglet: 5
Hermit Thrush: 1
American Robin: 69
Varied Thrush: 15
American Pipit: 24
Yellow-rumped Warbler: 35
Dark-eyed Junco: 21
Brewer's Blackbird: 2
Purple Finch: 3
Red Crossbill: 28
Pine Siskin: 550
American Goldfinch: 4
Evening Grosbeak: 2

Never, never, ever

As I have explained before, every night we have to walk up the road to close the gate to the park. It is a fairly mundane task generally. If not for our love of walking in the forest at night, it would be downright dull most of the time. But one never knows when excitement of the worst kind will find you. And this, I know very well. One never lets down their guard. Never. Never. Ever.

It had been a wonderful night. Our grandson Cedar, almost through his third year, was staying the night while his parents celebrated a birthday. We had cooked sausages and beans. Had watched some incomprehensible foreign children's shows. And had played several games all of which seemed to revolve around Cedar having imaginary conversations with Spider man and a squirrel puppet. As the evening wore on and the couch and the food and the voice of a child threatened to send me into a nodding coma, I realized that the hour had come to close the gate. I forced myself into my rain gear and grabbed my key ring and headlamp. Outside a storm was raging, surprising in intensity when compared with the peaceful goings on in the caretakers cottage. I stood in the doorway and watched the rain pound against the porch, hearing trees groaning in the dark, battered by warm southeasterly winds. It was black. It was blowing a gale. And it was raining hard. I stepped out onto the porch, and had the door almost closed when Cedar spoke up. "Papa..." he asked in his meek voice, "can you take me to see the beavers now?" I had forgotten until that moment, that I had promised to take him with me when I closed the gate, to see if the beavers were repairing the dam that we prudently breached as the storm hit earlier in the evening. If nothing else, it meant a few more dry moments while I waited for him and his grandma to find rain gear, flashlights and various other paraphernalia they thought they needed for the short walk up to the gate and a stop at the pond on the way back.

It was raining hard. Water blasting into us from underneath up top and sideways and all ways all at the same time. A gasping, snorting nostril filling deluge. And it was great. Cedar must have stomped in every one of the thousand puddles between the house and the gate, singing to himself and paying the weather and the pitch black of night no heed at all. Donna and I walked on either side of him, laughing every time he stomped his feet and splashed us with muddy water. We were all soaked by the time we got the gate locked. We had to shout to each other to be heard over the wind. In weather like this, I knew it was a waste of time to go look for beavers, but it was worth a visit just to re-check the level of the pond one more time. It was up. And there were no beavers around. Even in the heavy rain and wind I could smell them though. The stink of a male beaver was all over the dam, and there were new sprigs of willow and a bit of moss in the hole I had breached just a few hours earlier. I thought about pulling them too, but decided against it. I couldn't hear a thing, and a beaver dam on a flooding pond in night with a raging storm is nowhere to fool around. And Cedar was beginning to wander a bit. Not acceptable. No fooling around in the dark in the forest. Especially when the weather takes away one's hearing and sense of smell to add to the near blindness of night. We headed back to the house, and I sternly told Cedar to stay close. Just because that is what we do.

Near the house it is as black as it was near the pond. When the street light in the parking area burned out last month, that was the end of having an outdoor light in the park. Welcome to the new austerity. But no matter. We had headlamps and Cedar had a flashlight, and besides, there was nothing to see anyway. I knew this from 94 other walks just like this. And I knew that wasn't right either, and it bothered me, but I pushed it further into the background. We were almost home. We strolled quickly down the main road towards the house, looking straight ahead into the rain and wind and dark.

Almost home.

Tired.

Looking forward to a warm dry bed.

A story for Cedar.

Sleep after chasing a three year old all afternoon.

Sleep.

Guard down.

Cedar is three steps ahead of Donna.

I notice, and shake the sleep off, and open my mouth to say something.

He is another half step ahead now.

I am wide awake.

I don't know if I felt it before I saw it.

But I knew. And time changed.

A million ages of man pass in the splashing of one raindrop into the green eyes speeding past me 10 meters to my left.

Green eyes.

Low to the ground.

Fast.

Impossibly fast.

Time stops.

Completely stops.

The voice erupts from inside me. I lunge towards the edge of the forest, quicker than I imagined I could still move.

Wrath, terrible terrible terrible rage fills me.

"Donna, grab him!" are the words that come, so loud. In the black I sense her throw him over her shoulder as she begins sprinting for the porch before the next word comes.

"Cat!"

The word fills me with more hatred.

"You cunt"!

You will not take my grandson. The words form in my head in a universe different and distinct from the one unfolding here in the dark and the rain and the wind.

"You motherfucker!"

"No!"

"Fuck youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!"

"Get out of here!"

In my headlamp the cat shoots forward, a blurry tawny image with glowing green eyes crouched impossibly low in the wet salal but moving at an incredible speed, angling out of the woods to get between Donna and Cedar and the house.

I lunge into the forest, and I hear the door slam closed. I realize I am still screaming the worst obscenities at nothing. The cat is gone. I have no idea which direction it has gone.

My headlamp is dimming. The wind and rain is increasing. I glance left and right, stepping back against the trunk of a fir before I glance overhead. Time now resumes it's normal pace. Hearing and feeling returning like awaking from a nightmare.

My headlamp, now in need of a charge, begins to die. I back slowly to the porch and the light goes out.

The cougar is no longer here. It is gone.

I close the door, and Donna and Cedar are standing there.
Safe.

A Moorecroft Christmas Bird Count

Nine long years ago, I decided that we needed another Christmas Bird Count circle in this area. Although it was impossible to sandwich a full sized circle in between the Nanaimo and Parksville circles, a circle about 15% smaller could fit, and would cover the very interesting habitats of the Nanoose Peninsula, the Winchelsea Islands, north Nanaimo, Lantzville, and the fascinating Lantzville Uplands. After getting Dick Cannings blessing to squeeze this circle in, and doing a little stick handling with the compilers of the adjacent counts, the Nanoose Bay-Lantzville Christmas Bird Counts was born. Us locals continue to proudly refer to this count as the "Best Little CBC on Vancouver Island". And although we don't get the number of species as Parksville or Nanaimo, we always get a few interesting species, and it is such a lovely place to bird in.

Some years later, I moved to northern Vancouver Island for awhile, so I had to step aside from the compiling duties. This worked out great, as a new naturalist club, The Nanoose Naturalists, had formed in the area, and included some very keen birders, eager to make this count a highlight of each year. The count is now organized and compiled very capably by Rhys Harrison, with support from the Nanoose Naturalists. Next year will mark the 10th anniversary of this count.

This year, Donna and I have moved back into the count circle, after being absent for about three years, and with our work as caretakers for Moorecroft Regional Park, we were eager to do a thorough count of the park, as part of the Nanoose-Lantzville Christmas Bird Count circle. We were excited for the day, and all looked good, until the evening before, when the local weather forecast mysteriously changed from fair to ugly, at about 21:00 on the 15th of December, three hours before the count was to begin. Our plan had been to begin owling in the park at midnight, and then head back to bed until dawn, which isn't coming until about 8:00 these days. Poking my head out the door at midnight showed that the weather forecast was bang on. It was snowing, and blowing a gale. As owls are nearly impossible to locate in weather like this, we headed for bed, and I set the alarm for 2:00. Another quick look out the front door, and the snow had turned to rain, but the wind was blowing just as hard. I woke up every 20 minutes the rest of the night and did a quick check. Each time it was more difficult to get back to sleep, and at 4:00 I said the heck with it, and out the door we went. And, like magic, the wind died down and the rain stopped. One wonders if that would have worked at midnight? A quick walk up to the beaver pond netted us our first owl, a Northern Saw-whet. It also gave us an opportunity to visit with the beavers, who were attempting to repair the breach I had made in their dam the afternoon before, and were none to happy to encounter us at 4:30 in the pitch dark. With a mighty slap of a beaver tail, they were gone and we went back to searching for owls. We eventually found another saw-whet and heard a distant Barred Owl calling at dawn. Three owls is a good count for any island CBC, so we started the day with some hope.

At dawn we were crouched at Vesper Point, huddled together for warmth, with wind blasting us from a very strong SE storm that had blown in overnight. The plan was to catch the crow flocks coming from their night roosts on Gerald Island. The only problem was, we had seen very few crows going offshore to roost in the past month. In years past, as many as 4000 Northwestern Crows would fly offshore each night to roost at Gerald Island, and if you caught them coming ashore first thing in the4 morning, you were done counting crows for the day. You could even go back at the end of the day to do a second count to check your accuracy. Although we hadn't been seeing that many crows locally, we decided it was a good way to start the day. And it was. Gulls blasted past us in the near dark, some just a few feet above us. Marbled Murrelets gave their distinctive "keer" calls from somewhere offshore in the dark, just barely audible above the roar of the wind. And there came the crows! In the course of about 10 minutes, we counted 1487 Northwestern Crows flying past us. I don't know where they are roosting these days, but it is somewhere west of us, possibly on Mistaken Island? Anyway, we got our crows as the sun came up. Well, that isn't right. The sun may have come up, but we never saw it. All was grey and cold. The wind blasted, and we shivered in the dull gray of the day. And from the looks of the waves and the swaying of the trees, it would be a difficult day for counting birds.

After getting the crows, we headed back to the house for a quick cup of warm liquid, and then headed off to count the 85 acres of forest in the park. It didn't take us long to get into a big chick-let flock, which also included a Hutton's Vireo and a few Red-breasted Nuthatches. Brown Creepers were calling. A male Anna's Hummingbird sang from a perch high in a red cedar. Varied Thrush "chucked" from the high in the few arbutus that still held berries. The Bald Eagle pair called from their nest tree. All was good. And then we found the garbage. Some moron had dumped what appeared to be a dump truck load of garbage in front of the upper gate! Bird counting came to an end, as we went back to our caretaking duties.

Several hours later, with garbage taken care of, and law enforcement on the trail of the evil-doers, we were able to resume counting birds. By now the wind had settled into a steady 50 miles an our straight out of the south-southeast. This piled the waves smack onto Vesper Point in great white-capped swells, making sea-watching seem futile. But it didn't take long to figure out that the wind was on our side. It was blowing so hard, that those seabirds that generally feed in deeper water far offshore, were getting blown towards shore, and then had to take to the air to fly back out to where they preferred to be. This meant that birds which were normally too far offshore to see, were flying right past us, and in great numbers. This year, our counts of Pacific Loons, Common Murres, and especially, Ancient Murrelets, were counted in numbers several magnitudes higher than ever before. We also got a new species for a park list, as a pair of Black Scoters flew past. We ended up spending most of the rest of the day huddled in the rocks near Vesper Point, staring offshore as the wind pounded the shoreline. It was a great day, and we very much enjoyed it. The wind did make getting a decent count in the forest fairly difficult tough, and we did miss at least 10 species that we knew were there. Except for a couple of Northern Flickers, we totally dipped on woodpeckers, and had a similar experience with sparrows and finches. Not getting a single Dark-eyed Junco on a count like this is downright poor. But, such is counting birds at Christmas on Vancouver Island. Rain, wind, and more rain are about as much as one can expect. Still, it's a blast, and I can't wait for next year.

Birds seen in the Moorecroft Regional Park sub-area of the Nanoose - Lantzville Christmas Bird Count: Friday, 16 December 2011:

45 Species

3315 individual birds

Harlequin Duck: 8

Surf Scoter: 27

White-winged Scoter: 1

Black Scoter: 2

Long-tailed Duck: 4

Bufflehead: 8

Barrow's Goldeneye: 2

Common Merganser: 7

Red-breasted Merganser: 17

Pacific Loon: 386

Common Loon: 7

Horned Grebe: 3

Red-necked Grebe: 1

Brandt's Cormorant: 6

Double-crested Cormorant: 17

Pelagic Cormorant: 14

Great Blue Heron: 1

Bald Eagle: 24 (17 adults and 7 immature birds)

Black Oystercatcher: 3

Mew Gull: 140

Herring Gull: 2

Thayer's Gull: 6

Glaucous-winged Gull: 33

Common Murre: 496

Pigeon Guillemot: 5

Marbled Murrelet: 25

Ancient Murrelet: 207

Rhinoceros Auklet: 1

Barred Owl: 1

Northern Saw-whet Owl: 2

Anna's Hummingbird: 4

Northern Flicker: 2

Hutton's Vireo: 2

Northwestern Crow: 1487

Common Raven: 6

Chestnut-backed Chickadee: 42

Red-breasted Nuthatch: 2

Brown Creeper: 18

Bewick's Wren: 3

Pacific Wren: 22

Golden-crowned Kinglet: 219

Ruby-crowned Kinglet: 12

American Robin: 3

Varied Thrush: 36

Spotted Towhee: 2