Since 2018, the Vancouver Avian Research Centre has been involved in Bluebird Box Monitoring around the city of Merritt in south-central British Columbia.
Last weekend I finally had the opportunity to join a few compatriots to check nest boxes and band bluebird nestlings that were old enough.
After a few hectic days I’m finally getting a chance to write an update about last Thursday’s nest survey. I’ll have another post soon about an amazing experience I had yesterday, but that will have to wait.
I’m nearing the end of book by Richard Holloway titled Stories We Tell Ourselves: Making Meaning in a Meaningless Universe. One of the ideas he explores is our drive for certainty and the dangers implicit in it. While his focus is on society and religion, I couldn’t help reflecting on his thought in relation to birds and the natural (aka real) world.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say I’m more familiar with Glaucous-winged Gulls than most people. This is my forth summer watching them nest, watching the chicks grow and encounter the world, and eventually vanish into the city sky. Yet I feel more uncertain about their behaviour and experience every year as more and more questions arise in my mind.
I’m also reminded of Helen Macdonald’s book Vesper Flights. I don’t have the book anymore, but to paraphrase from memory: animals and the natural world are not here to teach us, but we can learn from them.
To me, that is at the core of bird-watching or any type of curiosity about the natural world. As your attention grows and deepens, gateways and paths merge, diverge, and twist deep into mystery.
The parents on this nest tend to get quite defensive - the sidewalk on the bridge on-ramp is a little too close for their liking. Here’s a parent on the same light post last year giving me a talking-to. I couldn’t confirm if there is a nest there, but I suspect so.
My nest survey started with a muggy bus ride, engulfed in the exhalations of my fellow passengers. I don’t take the bus much – I favour my feet – but every time I’m bewildered by how mesmerized we are by our phones. Like the stale air, almost everyone has their worlds enveloped by headphones and small screens, severing any ties to the world around them. The bus makes an unexpected quick stop, people hanging onto the poles to stop from falling. Unprepared, lost in digital hypnosis.
It’s easy enough, and perhaps justified, to dismiss my thinking as that of a curmudgeonly Luddite. But it’s hard to argue for how this technology has been used against us, consuming our attention with a Fata Morgana of hope and meaning, knowing that behind the curtain greedy men laugh and profit.
But what am I talking about? Let’s get on with the gulls…
Two birds at Chimney Nest. Last year this nest failed, hopefully this year is different.
Yesterday I went out for the first gull nest survey of the season. This is the earliest I’ve started; I usually don’t venture out until the second or third week of June. Many of the regulars are brooding already, with a few nests unaccounted for as of yet.
The air was still crisp as I started and the distant calls of White-crowned Sparrows competed with the roar of passing buses. It was the first time I’ve brought my camera out with me for months, and I quite enjoyed it. Being able to share these images, even in our utterly saturated visual world, brings me some modicum of meaning.
Let’s get started with the nests.
The pair at Cambie Nest are always some of the earliest nesters and among the first pairs to have chicks.
