Like my first recap I had intended to post this sometime in January. This year I wanted to streamline my process from the kludgey mess I had been using. I’ve been successful in moving most of the data processing into R, but it did take a while. I’m now able to parse the csv from eBird containing my observations and extract the relevant information. I can then create year, and locations lists using dplyr. This information can then be used to generate graphs, html tables using xtable, or kml files using plotKML. The process is not live updating but for that to work this code would probably need to be ported into MySQL and I would probably need API access from eBird to my own observations. I’m also having an issue with each point in my exported KML file having their own individual style, which then requires some editing in Google Earth. I then still need to manually add it to My Maps before I can embed it on a webpage. I’d welcome any suggestions here for streamlining. If anyone is interested you can find a copy of my R code here. [click to continue…]
2014 was another great birdwatching year for me with well over 200 species not including my November trip to Mexico making 2014 my best year yet (Fig. 1). Not surprisingly the majority of my birding happened in Metro Vancouver again this year but I did bird further afield than in 2013 (Fig. 2). Trips out to Alberta, Saskatchewan, Washington, the Okanagan, and Tofino helped bump up my year total relative to last year. Of my 245 North American (north of Mexico) species, 189 were from Metro Vancouver, 5 fewer species than in 2013. This drop in species was reflected in a drop in rank from 14 to 20 among Metro Vancouver eBird contributors [click to continue…]
Last month Sara and I were lucky enough to grab spots on a follow up Pelagic Cruise organized by Russell Canning after the great sightings from the previous weekend. Our skipper for the day was the owner of the Tofino Whale Centre John Forde. We departed from the Tofino docks at around 07:45 in somewhat foggy conditions for our over 7 hour pelagic cruise. [click to continue…]
Well, soon turned into a long time but here are my field notes from my not so recent trip to Ferry Point in the Battle River badlands. While it was my first trip out there, it seems the central Alberta naturalists have been gathering there for several years now. It provides a little taste of southern Alberta tucked into the fields of central Alberta.
I joined up with the other naturalist at around noon for a survey of the local prairie potholes. We saw a good variety a ducks, especially by summer Vancouver standards, including some courting Ruddy Ducks and some backlit Red Heads. After the pond birding we made a quick stop at a farm yard to check out the local colony of Purple Martins. Our next stop was an abandoned farm yard where we were lucky enough to have Wayne Nelson from Fish and Wildlife take us in small groups through an old farm house to see a nesting Turkey Vulture and her newly hatched chick. I also was able to get some good macro shots as I waited to see the Turkey Vulture. In addition to birding my Dad also celebrated his 60th birthday so there was of course some birthday cake to be enjoyed. After dinner we were also lucky enough to spot a family of Great Horned Owls near the campground. That evening we treated to a display from the local fireflies with one even lighting up in the palm of my hand.
The next day we stayed closer to the campground and did some botanizing on the adjoining property with some great badland topography. While we were heading out to botanize the birds conspired to hold most of my attention. I think the highlight may have been when we had 5 Turkey Vultures soaring just above our group at low altitude. I was also surprised to see a group of Lark Sparrows, which I have always thought of as a strictly Southern Alberta bird. There was also lots of great insect life out, including a bunch of Tiger Beetles who eluded me and my young assistants.
It was a productive birding weekend for me with 17 new species for my year list, including lots of east of the Rockies species like Swainson’s Hawk, Clay-colored Sparrow and Baltimore Oriole. I don’t think I’ve ever been so pleased to add American Crow and Black-billed Magpie to my list before. Over the two days I ended up with 60 different bird species either seen or heard. You can see the full list by checking out the KMZ file below.
I spent this past Mother’s day enjoying the nice weather on Burnaby Mountain. I had a good day of birding adding a bunch of spring migrants to my year list. As always with my first spring outing, I spent a good chunk of the morning working on my rusty birdcalls. It always takes me a while to get the difference between Pacific-slope & Hammond’s Flycatchers straight in my head and it seems to me that the Black-throated Gray Warbler’s song doesn’t match the recordings I’ve heard. Despite these difficulties with my bird call ID, I saw a good variety of warblers, including large numbers of Yellow-rumped Warblers moving through. The highlight for the day was picking up a Chipping Sparrow for my BC list, in the rose garden near Horizons. I spent more than 7 hours wandering the trails near Horizons covering over 7 kilometers and getting a really wicked sunburn but my effort was rewarded with 28 species of birds. [click to continue…]
Well, this post was supposed to be up in early January and now it’s the end of March, but I really wanted to have some bird lists up when I posted this. I’m going to blame candidacy exam preparations and a steep learning curve when it came to parsing my data from ebird. I do finally, after more than a year, have some active links to birding lists in the menu above. The process is still very kludgy, is not live updating, and for the maps involves a pipeline shunting the data from excel to R to a csv to kml converter and then through google earth. Not in any way ideal but better than nothing till I learn more mySQL. Now we move from excuses and nerdy programing minutia to nerdy birdwatching minutia, buckle up!
[click to continue…]Sara I headed out to Delta last Friday to enjoy the nice weather. Unfortunately the sun was obscured by dense fog patches near the Strait of Georgia. We heard the fog horn blasting all day. The fog did make for some interesting photo opportunities at Reifel & Brunswick Point. [click to continue…]
As I mentioned in a previous photo of the week Sara and I visited Stanley Park on a sunny day last month. For a change on this outing we headed for Beaver Lake instead of Lost Lagoon. [click to continue…]
This post is the last in a series about last summer’s trip to Vancouver. On the way back to Edmonton we stopped in Jasper National Park for the night. That evening I took a few photos along Wapiti Trail on the way to the Jasper Brewing Company. The next morning we took the Jasper Tramway up to the top of the Whistlers. The tramway is a great way to see the alpine without all of that pesky hiking (3-5 hours). It also a great place to photograph the alpine flora with a bunch of plants found only at high elevations. In addition to the plants there is of course great mountain scenery. You can see our route on the map below. [click to continue…]
A couple weeks ago I headed out to Grant Narrows following up on some reports of a Great Egret. After getting some good views of the Egret from the northern viewing tower, I took a short walk down the Nature Trail. I was again impressed by the diversity of odonates. I was surprised to see any dragonflies flying in October let alone three species. After some reading I found my surprise was misplaced as several dragonflies in Southern BC fly well into October with the flight period of the Shadow Darner extending into early November.
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