2010 Nesting Season - Biodiversity Centre for Wildlife Studies

well every year by a small group of long-time
participants. The important contribution here
is the methodical approach to data-gathering,
mainly by Vicky and Lloyd Atkins and Chris
Siddle, and earlier Alice Beals. Regular sites
are visited about the same time of year with
about the same effort.
Vi and John Lambie, once again, reported
nesting events from the Mackenzie area,
helping to fill in gaps for breeding birds in the
central portion of British Columbia. Ted Hillary
continued to provide first-rate coverage for the
water portion of the southern end of Shuswap
Lake and residential areas of Salmon Arm.
Fieldwork this year by Wayne and Eileen
Campbell was concentrated in the southcentral
region of the province from the Cariboo-
Chilcotin region south to the USA border. Many
new wetlands were searched for breeding birds
and Black Tern nesting platforms were also
checked for occupancy.
Other areas especially well covered in 2010
included Campbell River (Ed Silkens), Harrison
Hot Springs (Janne Perrin; see Participant Profile
on inside back cover), East Kootenays (Sheila
Reynolds), Kamloops region (Willie Haras and
Wayne and Eileen Campbell), Lower Mainland
(Errol Anderson, Kevin Atkins, Wayne Campbell,
and Glenn Ryder), North Peace River region
(Don Myers, Mark Phinney, Michael Preston and
Andrew Tyrrell), Pemberton (Ruth Hellevang),
Powell River (Ivar Nygaard-Petersen), Prince
George (Nancy Krueger and Elsie Lafreniere),
Revelstoke (Orville Gordon), Rithets Bog
(Wayne Campbell), Shuswap Lake/Salmon Arm
(Ted Hillary, Tom Brighouse, Ed and Monica
Dahl, and Hilary Gordon), Smithers/Telkwa
(Evi and Mel Coulson and Marcus Womersley),
Swan Lake (Vernon) (Wayne Campbell), and
the West Kootenay region (Janice Arndt, Ed
and Hazel Beynon, Gary Davidson, Marlene
Johnston, Elaine Moore, Larry Prosser, Lorraine
Symmes, and Rita Wege).
The entire north-central and northwestern
portion of the province was poorly covered
although some historical information was
transferred for the regions.
For the entire total (25,404 records) the top
five areas with highest numbers were from the
vicinity of Charlie Lake-Cecil Lake-North Pine
(094A/7), Brooks Peninsula (92L/4), Creston
valley (82F/1 and 82F/2), Vernon (82l/6), and
Westwold (82L/5).
The five highest numbers of species in a grid
were reported for the vicinity of the Creston
valley (102 species), Vernon (62 species; Figure
59), Merritt (60 species), Westwold (42 species),
and Williams Lake (41 species).
Figure 59. Proof of breeding was reported for a
respectable 62 species, including this Killdeer
chick, in the north Okanagan Valley in 2010.
Near Vernon, BC. 20 June 2010. (Photo by
Vicky Atkins).
Participants
With gasoline, accommodation, and food
costs increasing it is remarkable that our
volunteers were still able to commit the time and
money they did to contribute to the BCNRS. We
are also grateful they are focused and that they
understand the significance of maintaining
longevity in gathering consistent data on the
province’s breeding birds.
In 2010, 272 participants started their search
for nesting birds in January and finally called it
a “year” nine months later in September. Then,
they spent part of their autumn completing
nest cards! And the results showed - it was a
banner year.
Sixteen individuals contributed more than
100 breeding records and of these, three
submitted over 1,000 records. But these
numbers have to be put into perspective. Most
of the 6,589 records reported by Wayne and
Eileen Campbell and the 1,222 records by Don
Myers were for colonial-nesting waterbirds such
as Eared Grebe, although impressive numbers
were tallied for loosely-colonial marsh-nesting
species like American Coot, Marsh Wren, Redwinged
Blackbird (Figure 60), Yellow-headed
Blackbird, and Black Tern.
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