Scanning the Sky For Their Feathered Friends

By Gagandeep Ghuman
Published: Feb. 14, 2014

The night slid towards the morning, which brought the birds out into a sky laden with clouds.  

Mist shrouded the distant mountains. The winds were silent and in this dream of a landscape, you could hear the birds chirp and flutter in the sky above.

Back on ground, a red truck stopped on the Spit and two men came out with a singular thought on their minds: Birds.

Brian Self, Meg Fellowes, Richard Cannings, Rick Toochin, Derek Sutton, Len Goldsmith, Jim Wisnia, Heather Baines, Nancy Ricker, Marcia and Grant Danielson, Judy Vetsch, Patrick McNamara, Don Fieldhouse, Bev Hill and Thor Halvorson have given many Sundays to counting birds in Squamish.

“Did you hear that, it’s the cormorant,” said Chris Dale, a man whose home must have been the sky in a previous life.

David Lassman turned his ear to the sound and nodded in agreement.

Then, as if on cue, birds filled the sky above Chris Dale.

He hurried out his telescope and flipped open his notebook.

The monthly bird count had begun.

Before they come to the estuary, the birders first flock to the Howe Sound Inn, where they usually meet at 8 a.m. every month.

From there, they flutter out in teams of twos and fours to count birds in Squamish in the estuary.

On this second Sunday of January, David Lassman and Chris Dale are searching the skies on the Spit.

The wind makes a comeback, the drizzle morphs into rain and through the lens, Chris Dale spots a loner.

It’s an American Coot, Dale says, giving over his scope to Lassman.

But before Dale makes a note, he wants to be sure. He closes the notebook and opens the Bible of birding on his iPhone.

There are more bird apps on his phone than birds he has spotted this morning: Bird Codes, Bird Eye, Bird Pro, Bird Tunes, and then there is the Bible, Sibley birds.

He confirms it’s the coot.

“The bird isn’t found here usually, but the last few days it’s been hanging around here,” Dale says.

“Well, look there, it’s a raven,” says David Lassman.

A bird flits across the sky, black wings majestically open and then more birds follow him, specks of white and black on the ashen sky.

The men get busy.

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The first formal bird checklist was compiled by Jim Wisnia in early 1990s with financial support from the newly-formed Squamish Estuary Conservation Society.

Since then, birders have taken it as their duty and hobby to compile birding lists.

Brian Self, Meg Fellowes, Richard Cannings, Rick Toochin, Derek Sutton, Len Goldsmith, Jim Wisnia, Heather Baines, Nancy Ricker, Marcia and Grant Danielson, Judy Vetsch, Patrick McNamara, Don Fieldhouse, Bev Hill and Thor Halvorson have given many Sundays to counting birds.

Chris Dale is common sight for the birds of Squamish now.

But Dale and his wife Beverly were introduced to the local birding community by McNamara and Vetsch in Feb. 1999.

Since his retirement in 2006, Dale has been in the estuary almost every day looking for his feathery friends.

He even speaks their language.

“Kacha..kacha, chee-chuuuu,” he walks into the estuary trail calling them.

“Sometimes they call back, but on other days they just ignore me,” he says, laughing.

And then they see familiar sights: Chickadees, small woodpeckers, and juncos running in a pack, and the ubiquitous of all, Canada geese.

Besides these, about two hours into the bird count, the men have also seen Horned Grebe, Crows, the Common Goldeneye, Eagles and of course, Seagulls.

Birders count some 50 bird species during the winter and close to 80 in the summer.  

There are what Lassman calls the ‘usual suspects’: Song Sparrows, Spotted Towhee, Robins, Blackbirds, Juncos, Chickadee that stay around all year.

But we also have visitors. Last year, 10 birds unusual to the region were seen in our skies.

Dale uses shorthand for the bird count, writing the bird’s name along with the number on his notepad.  

Once they are done on the Spit, both men will reach the Howe Sound Inn around noon where other birders will come together to make a final tally.

It will be uploaded to the website and shared with birding websites all across Canada.

Chris Dale looks through his binoculars and spots an amateur eagle sitting on a log in the estuary.

“You see that seagull, just look under it,” he says, handing over the binoculars to Lassman.

Dale flips open his cell phone to check something. An owl stares back from the home screen of his iPhone.

“I’ve got my wife’s pics somewhere else,” he says, smiling.

“This main display is for just birds.”