Category: Canada

Vancouver’sJericho Park was covered with warblers this afternoon, but try as I might, I couldn’t find anything other than Yellow-rumps.

That’s an insidious “but,” of course, suggesting as it does that Yellow-rumped Warbler is somehow lesser than the other possible parulids. It is indeed much more abundant than any other, but that doesn’t make this species any less interesting. Or these species.

The birding world is abuzz with anticipation of a re-split of the yellow-rumped warblers, which were lumped almost 40 years ago in the great taxonomic massacre of the 1973 AOU Supplement. Now the Check-list Committee is evaluating a proposal to recognize at least two separate species in Dendroica coronata as now construed (and to correct the genus name to Setophaga–but that’s another story).

Both white-throated Myrtle Warblers and yellow-throated Audubon’s Warblers breed in British Columbia, and both are common migrants here in the Vancouver area, with the latter taxon generally the more abundant. Apparent hybrids and intergrades are easy to find if you look; one bird this afternoon had the yellow throat of an Audubon’s and the white malars and reduced white on the greater coverts of a Myrtle–I’m not sure I ever heard it chip, unfortunately.

The AOU Committee doesn’t much care what a birder wants, but still I hope for the split. And if it comes, I think we’ll all start paying attention again to what have for too long been “just yellow-rumps.”

Gellert and I spent a little time looking at gulls yesterday at Jericho Park, as usual relishing the irony of sorting through the abundant Mew Gulls in search of Ring-billed Gulls.

The light on a misty morning was perfect for looking at variation in back color, of which Mew Gulls, of course, show considerable. I think of Ring-billed Gulls as much more consistently colored, adults (almost!) invariably pale gray, which made the duo in the photo all the more interesting. From whatever angle I chose, the left-hand bird remained conspicuously dark-mantled; to my surprise, the photo came out quite close to naked-eye reality.

It doesn’t “mean” anything, but it’s still fun to discover a little bit of variation in even the most common species. They can turn out to be less boringly familiar than you think sometimes.

It felt like a morning for spring arrivals, all damp and warm, so Gellert and I struck out for Jericho Park. Our walk was pleasant enough, and there was a small fall of Red-shafted Flickers and American Robins, but our hopes for novelty went unfulfilled.

Except by this.

This lone Mute Swan was out on English Bay, far from the allurements of the duck pond, and presumably got there under its own power. The nearest source is Lost Lagoon, a couple of miles away in Stanley Park, but I’m told that all those birds are pinioned; the closest obviously feral swans that I know of are on Westham Island, five or six miles south.

Or maybe this is Canada’s first wild Mute Swan.

Yeah sure.

After a couple of weeks of desultory snatches of song, Pacific Wrens have really started to fill the woods with their trills.

Click on the photo and turn up the volume to hear a couple of birds singing at each other in Jericho Park.