The Victoria Naturalist Mission with Your Name, Address, and Phone Number and Provide a Title
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MARCH The Victoria APRIL 1999 NATURALIST VOL 55.5 VICTORIA NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY HI The Victoria OUR mm NATURALIST COVER Contents Loucas Raptis has contributed his great skill and art in producing the line drawing for our cover Published six times a year by the SUBMISSIONS VICTORIA NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY consistent with the theme of Marbled Murrelets Deadline for next issue: March 19,1999 Mysterious Murrelets P.O. Box 5220, Station B, Victoria, B.C. V8R 6N4 nesting. Contents © 1999 as credited. Send to: Glen Moores, Editor, By Anna Young . 4 ISSN 0049—612X Printed in Canada 9365 Captain's Walk, Sidney, B.C. V8L4G6 Highlights Publication Mail Commercial Sales Agreement Number 1273108 Phone: 250-655-3772 Fax: 250-655-1750 The Perilous Life of a Chironomid To provide you with the full statistics of the E-MAIL: [email protected] Editor: Glen Moores, 655-3772 By Loucas Raptis . 8 Christmas Bird Count and the Butterfly Count Desktop Publishing: Frances Hunter, Beacon Hill Guidelines for Submissions for 1998 we have increased the size of this issue Communications Group, 479-1956 Members are encouraged to submit articles, Held trip reports, birding Hat Tricks 10 so that we can continue to provide the articles and botany notes, and book reviews with photographs or illustrations if Distribution: Lyndis Davis, Tom Gillespie that you have become used to. Printing: Fotoprint, 382-8218 possible. Photographs of natural history are appreciated along with docu• Early Christmas Bird Counts in Victoria and mentation of location, species names and a date. Please label your sub• We are pleased to introduce Anna Young as Opinions expressed by contributors to The Victoria Naturalist mission with your name, address, and phone number and provide a title. Other B.C. Sites are not necessarily those of the Society. We will accept and use copy in almost any legible form but we encourage a contributor of the feature article on Marbled submission of typed, double-spaced copy or an IBM compatible word By David Stirling and Cam Finlay 13 Murrelets. Anna will be speaking at Birders' VICTORIA NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY processing file on any size diskette, plus printed output. Having copy Night in March. Honorary Life Members: submitted on diskette saves a lot of time and work for the publications 1998 Christmas Bird Count group and wc really appreciate the help. If you have an obscure or very Please note that the announcement for fee Miss E.K. Lemon, Mrs. L.E. Chambers old word processing program, call the Editor, Glen Moores, at 655-3772, Introduction by David Pearce 15 Mrs. Peggy Goodwill, Mr. Vic Goodwill increase in the January/ February issue stated in or save the text in ASCII format. Blank diskettes may be obtained from Mr. David Stirling the editor and we will return any of your own diskettes submitted. Photos Valentine's Day Couples Count error that the Annual General Meeting would be Officers: 1997-98 and slides submitted may be picked up at the Field-Naturalist, 1126 in April, when it should have been March 9. Blanshard Street, or will be returned if a stamped, self-addressed enve• PRESIDENT: Tom Gillespie, 361-1694 By Dannie Carsen 22 lope is included with the material. VICE-PRESIDENT: open PAST-PRESIDENT: David Allinson, 478-0493 Letters 23 SECRETARY: Hank VanderPol, 658-3482 VNHS MEMBERSHIP TREASURER: Gordon Hart, 721-1264 For membership information and renewal, please contact Catherine Fryer, 1998 Butterfly Counts 479-7927, or write to Membership Committee c/oThe Victoria Natural Directors and Committees By Jeff Gastrin 24 History Society, Box 5220, Victoria, B.C., V8R 6N4. Catherine Fryer, 479-7927 (Membership) Robert Chappell, 388-4696 (F.B.C.N. Representative) Birds in our Area ADVERTISING GUIDELINES John Olafson, 658-8993 (Parks and Conservation) By Marie O'Shaughnessy 24 Bruce Whittington, 388-4174 and We do our best to ensure your ad is produced accurately. Should wc make an error, please contact us and a correction can be printed in the Darren Copley, 479-6622 (Programs) Feathered Friends Marie O'Shaughnessy, 598-9680 (Publicity next issue. A charge is levied for typesetting. Minor alterations to exist• ing ads cost $10.00. Add $15 per photo for PMT. Advertising fees are Stephen Baker, 721-0446 (Social Committee) due and payable when copy is submitted. Please submit a cheque pay• By Marge Crowther 26 David Allinson, 478-0493 (Scholarships, Awards, Birding) able to The Victoria Naturalist. Colleen O'Brien, 388-4520 (Habitat Acquisition Trust Ad Size Price Dimensions (in inches) B.C. Nest Record Scheme 26 Foundation) Back page $120 7.5" width x 8" height Other Functions Full page, inside $100 7.5 width x 9.5" height Chester Peter (Ches) Lyons Birder's Night: Bryan Gates, 598-7789 1/2 page, horizontal $80 7.5" width x 4.75" height 1/2 page, vertical $80 3.5" width x 9.5" height By David Stirling 27 Swan Lake Nature Sanctuary: Wally Macgregor, 658-8956 1/3 page horizontal $50 7.5" width x 3.25" height Annual Dues, Victoria Natural History Society 1/3 page, vertical $50 3.5" width x 6.5" height Notes from the VNHS Mailbox 1/4 page, horizonlal $40 7.5" width x 2.25" height Includes The Victoria Naturalist and B.C. Naturalist 1/4 page, vertical $40 3.5" width x 4.75" height By Bruce Whittington 28 Regular $25.00 Golden Age $24.00 1/8 page, horizontal $25 3.5" width x 2.25" height Family $30.00 Junior Subscriber $ 12.00 Rates as of February. 1994. May be subject to change. Welcome to New Members , 29 (Any donation in excess of the above fees is income tax deductible) Submit advertising to: QUALITY PHOTOFINISHING Annual Subscription Rate, Victoria Naturalist $17.00 The Victoria Naturalist, P.O. Box 5220, Calendar of Events 30 747 Discovery Street, Victoria, B.C. V8T 1H1 Victoria, B.C. Canada, VSR 6N4 RARE BIRD ALERT: 592-3381 or phone Glen Moores at 250-655-3772 Back cover photo of Pink Trillium: Bill McMillan Phone: (250) 385-5512 VNHS EVENTS TAPE: 479-2054 Thank you far your patronage. 2 The Victoria Naturalist Vol. 55.5 (1999) The Victoria Naturalist Vol. 55.5 (1999) 3 last but not least, to locate nest Mysterious Murrelets trees. Survey stations Three brave spirits were Forest over 100 years old quickly hired for the team, not put By Anna Young (from SE1 database) off by Alan's questions on bear experience and back-country GVWD catchment area land camping at the interviews. Katy Regional and provincial parks Holm was one, a third year arbled Murrelets: magical, mysterious birds! This biology student at UVic, while is the story of a pilot project that ran during the Federal lands Anna and Stephen Young had just M summer of 1998 in the Douglas-fir forests of the moved to Victoria from the UK, so Victoria area, searching for evidence that Marbled Murrelets recently they spent their first week were nesting there. on the job unloading furniture and Less than 25 cm long, murrelets are relatives of birds endless boxes from the shipping like the Common Murre and Ancient Murrelet, and are often container. The first week was spent seen on the seas surrounding Victoria and the Saanich hurriedly buying equipment and Peninsula. Their winter feathers of black above and white digging out maps of potential old- beneath, with a touch of white on the scapulars where the growth in the area (well, Katy was wings join the body, make the relationship obvious. It's just hurrying: Anna and Steve were as well, for their summer plumage is very different; a trying to find the floor in their mottled brown above and dull white mottled with brown apartment). Training from Alan in below. This camouflage aims to keep the bird hidden while official murrelet survey techniques on the nest and is a great mimic of the mossy mats found on was followed by a visit to the the branches of old-growth trees where murrelets nest. As Carmanah valley (prime murrelet a recent arrival from the UK, where seabirds do things habitat) on the south-west coast of properly and nest on rocky cliffs in colonies, I was sceptical the Island where a long-running when first introduced to marbled murrelets and inclined to study was in full swing. The suspect a practical joke. Seabirds nesting in old-growth trees Carmanah team provided practical up to 70 km inland? Hmm! survey training, but at first Anna, Big trees are not the first place a seabird would think of Steve and Katy were convinced to set up home; and how murrelets got settled in such an they had gone deaf. Next to an unlikely place remains a mystery. They may have evolved experienced surveyor who was the practice to take advantage of the giant prehistoric red• pointing in the direction of the wood forests which cloaked the Pacific coast of North murrelet calls, they could hear America in the mid-Miocene period. Today marbled nothing over the dawn chorus din murrelets are found from SE Alaska south to mid-California, of wrens and robins. Nothing new A young marbled murrelet at sea. Photo: Gus van Vteet MARBLED MURRELET STUDY AREA wherever there is suitable forest on land for nesting. Marbled there, said the Carmanah team, and murrelets are present in reasonable numbers (an estimated Adapted from a map provided by Clover Point Cartograpics sure enough, with practise you 40 - 50,000) in the coastal waters of B.C., but there is ravens, Steller's Jays and other predators are the largest could pick out the thread of gull• evidence of sharp declines so they are listed as threatened in cause of nest failure for murrelets; even at the best of times like keer calls.