2010 Nesting Season - Biodiversity Centre for Wildlife Studies

Highlights
Families and Species
The diversity of birds now breeding in
British Columbia has reached 315 species,
representing 54 of the 62 families found in the
province.
Six families, including 58 species, again
dominated 2010 and historical totals with
over 1,200 individual breeding records each.
Combined, these groups accounted for 74 % of
all cards submitted in 2010. Not surprisingly,
colonial-nesting Gulls and Terns (nine species
with 8,748 records) topped the family list for
most records due almost entirely to historical
information that was transferred from
publications. Unlike previous nesting seasons,
blackbirds (nine species with 2,823 records)
and grebes (six species with 2,485 records)
followed as the result of surveys of wetlands
completed in 2010.
Highest species’ number for the six families,
in descending order, were Glaucous-winged
Gull (7,165), Eared Grebe (2,062), Yellowheaded
Blackbird (1,719), Pelagic Cormorant
(1,118), Tree Swallow (727; Figure 48), and
Mallard (556; Figure 49).
Figure 49. Almost all breeding records for
Mallard were sightings of a brood accompanied
by a female. Fortunately, most records contained
value-added information describing the ageclasses
of the young. Duck Lake (Creston), BC.
3 June 2010 (Photo by Brent Wellander).
Other noteworthy bird family totals, without
colonial-nesting species, were the Bluebirds
and Thrushes (eight species with 714 records),
Ospreys, Eagles and Hawks (nine species with
512 records), Oystercatchers (one species with
465 records), and Towhees, Sparrows and
Juncos (12 species with 308 records).
The large number of Black Oystercatcher
records, nearly twice that received in 2009,
were mostly of clutches of eggs extracted from
historical field notebooks and publications
(Figure 50).
Figure 48. Tree Swallow, not the original target
species for nest boxes, has benefited greatly
from the many trails scattered around the
province. This collection of four Tree Swallow
nestlings are about two days old. Vernon, BC.
25 June 2010 (Photo by Vicky Atkins).
Figure 50. Over 90% of all breeding records for
Black Oystercatcher received in 2010 were of
nests with eggs. Thornton Island, BC. 24 June
1975 (Photo by R. Wayne Campbell).
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