Birding in B.C.: How to get started and where to see the best birds

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A wander around Iona Beach Regional Park in Richmond with master birder Melissa Hafting is like taking a masterclass on birding.

During a recent outing, I learned the park is a very popular spring layover spot for migrating birds. And that the lessening number of migrating swallows is worrisome.

“It’s terrible. Every year, there are less of them,” said Hafting.

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Hafting, who was introduced to birds by her father when she was five, has just released Dare To Bird: Exploring the Joy and Healing Power of Birds. A mixture of memoir and guidebook and packed with stunning photos by Hafting, Dare to Bird celebrates the healing power of birds while digging into the importance of conserving habitat and creating an inclusive environment among the birding community.

For Hafting, her lifelong connection with birds was paramount in navigating grief after losing her parents only one year apart.

“It helped comfort me and heal me. It gave me joy,” said Richmond’s Hafting as we walked a grassy path on a muggy spring day.

During our ramble around the park, conversation was stopped numerous times as Hafting halted to point out the calls of a Cedar Waxwing, Purple Martin, and a Yellow-headed Blackbird. The latter drawing the most attention as its numbers in this area, Hafting reports, have dwindled.

“Oh, I heard him again. Let’s go see if we can find him,” Hafting said as we backtracked to a small pond surrounded by rushes.

After a minute or two of scouring the area, Hafting shrugged her shoulders and we headed off again.

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“It’s sad because, normally, it wouldn’t be so hard for you to see them,” said Hafting. “There was up to 30 nesting here. And now, there is like one pair left. So, it’s really sad.”

While the Yellow-headed Blackbird was not interested in being spotted that day, the Great Blue Herons, Red-winged Blackbirds, various shorebirds, hummingbirds, gulls, swallows, woodpeckers, chickadees and, of course, Bald Eagles gave us plenty to look at.
Hafting says she usually hears the birds before she sees them. Her ear is fine-tuned after years of studying bird calls. She can’t count how many calls she can identify.

Just then, a Bald Eagle flew over and chirped.

“They’re kind of the Mike Tyson of the bird world, don’t you think?” I asked Hafting about the ill-fitting cartoonish call for a bird of prey.

Hafting chuckled at that analogy and said, “You know what Hollywood does, right?”

No.

“Almost every movie in Hollywood replaces the Bald Eagle’s call with a Red-tailed Hawk,” said Hafting, smiling broadly. “Because the eagle’s sound is so wimpy.”

That cinematic trickery exposed, we continued our walk heading west along the edge of the Fraser River. Along the way, we encountered a few other birders who Hafting chatted up and asked what they had seen that day. Their answer: nothing out of the ordinary. But that didn’t seem to dampen any of their spirits.

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If a rare bird gets spotted, a serious birder will go to the B.C. Rare Bird Alert (BC RBA) website, which Hafting has been running since 2014. The site lists all the rare birds in the province. The site is fed by the community and is always updating. It has become a go-to resource for twitchers — aka rare bird lovers — who actively pursue birds. Think: storm chasers, but with much less risk.

Our walk continued out to the shoreline and then back toward the field house at Iona. Along that short route, we passed a few tidal ponds that were busy with a variety of shorebirds. But again, Hafting said there used to be a lot more.

Opening up the birding community for everyone

At the end of our hour-long walk, we sat down at a picnic table to talk and seconds later we were joined by a couple of Red-winged Blackbirds looking for a snack.

“They are here as soon as you stop,” said Hafting as the birds hopped around the table in front of us.

During our chat, I asked Hafting about the birders we just happened upon and suddenly a shadow was cast over a lovely morning.

“Yeah it’s very much still older, white guys,” said Hafting, who is Black. “When I started, there were hardly any females and people of colour. Well, there wasn’t any. I felt really out of place and not really included. Not everyone was friendly to me at all.

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“I remember some of these people who were considered top birders, and they would say, you don’t look like a birder.”

Hafting said she was often asked where she was from, and sadly, she was subjected to online harassment.

“I’ve had to work probably three times harder than other people to just get respect and to be taken seriously,” said Hafting. “Now, you meet people, everybody knows me. It’s okay. But it was really hard. And I think a lot of people would have left. I got lots of terrible things — racist emails, racist talk, rape threats, death threats — I had to go to the police for some things. People who hung out with me got them too. My friends, white men who were friendly towards me, got these hateful emails about being n-word lovers and other terrible stuff. It was disgusting.”

But it didn’t outweigh her love of birds. In fact, it fueled a fire in her. Instead of retreating, Hafting advanced into the birding world and its message boards and associations, and she began the B.C. Young Birders Program in 2014. Hafting said her current group of 25 young birders includes South Asian, Black, Indigenous and trans kids.

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“I was really alone and felt not very welcomed. So that’s when I saw those kids, I wanted to do something for them, because I saw them all alone too. And I wanted to feel like they were included,” said Hafting, who proceeded to share a story about one of the young birders in her group.

“A Black male,14-year-old was birding near here and someone saw him in the ponds at the edge of Iona and called the police on him,” said Hafting, adding she has also been subjected to offensive queries while she was birding.

That bigoted perception took a huge hit in 2020 when the story of Amy Cooper, a white dogwalker, in New York’s Central Park, called 911 on Black birder Christian Cooper (unrelated) claiming he was threatening her and her dog.

“When that happened a lot of people woke up. I mean, a lot of white people woke up — people of colour knew about this already – they woke up and said, wow, I didn’t know this happened to you. And they wanted to get more educated and try and make a difference, and there was a huge shift when that happened,” said Hafting. “People acknowledged there was a problem and started to do things differently.”

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Hafting said statements of equity and inclusion appeared on birding websites and boards became more diverse.

“There is a lot of work that still needs to be done,” said Hafting of the birding community. “It is still predominantly white, male-driven, but things are changing.”

A beginner’s guide to birding in B.C.

What does a beginner birder need?

All a beginner birder needs is a pair of binoculars and a field guide. Binoculars can be pricey, so birders can rent a free pair of good-quality binoculars, a backpack and field guide in a birding set for 30 days at several local libraries in the lower mainland and Fraser Valley.

Any tips for a beginner birder?

Get outside and just enjoy birds and nature any way you can. You don’t need anything fancy, and can bird right in your own backyard. Write down the birds you see and key field marks to help you identify them when you look in your field guide. Or take photos with a point-and-shoot camera to help you learn the birds you are seeing and help you identify them when you look for a match in your field guide. Try and join local birding walks in your community. Here you can meet other like-minded people and have a local birder explain the birds you are seeing.

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Are there any good birding apps to get started?

• eBird — A free citizen science app that allows users to record all the birds they see while out in the field birding.

• Audubon Bird Guide — A free app that has all the bird calls and birds in North America and some rare vagrants to North America.

• Sibley’s Bird App — A paid app ($24.99 ) that has some cool features such as allowing users to compare similar species to one another in the same frame.

What are the 3 rarest birds you have personally found in B.C.? 

• Guadalupe Murrelet off Tofino
• Common Ringed Plover in Boundary Bay in Delta
• Curlew Sandpiper at Boundary Bay in Delta

Some of Melissa Hafting’s favourite birding locations in B.C. 

1. In the Lower Mainland — Boundary Bay, which is a great stopover for migratory shorebirds and is the best shorebirding in the province. Many rare Asian vagrant shorebirds have turned up here from Bar-tailed Godwits, to Siberian Sand-Plover to Curlew Sandpipers and more.

Reifel Bird Sanctuary is another spot I love because of the diversity and high number of birds. It’s where my father first took me and I fell in love with birds while feeding chickadees. There is lots of waterfowl there, sandhill cranes, shorebirds like phalaropes and a large amount of warblers and passerines. You never bored on any visit.

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Maplewood Flats is another lovely spot in North Van where you can see waterfowl and also one of the few Lower Mainland hotspots that you can see singing Red-eyed Vireos. In the spring there usually are bluebirds and Say’s phoebes passing through as well.

2. In the interior — Road 22 (north end of Osoyoos Lake) in the Okanagan, because it is so full of bird activity in the spring. Here you can see endangered Yellow-breasted Chats, Lewis’s Woodpeckers, California Quails, Osprey, Western and Eastern Kingbirds, American Redstarts, Gray Catbirds. And, up against the nearby cliffs at a place called The Throne, you can see Lark Sparrows, Rock and Canyon Wrens, White-throated Swifts and Mountain and Western Bluebirds, Bullock’s Orioles, Chukar, Gray Partridge, Western Meadowlarks and more.

3. On the Vancouver Island — Cattle Point in Victoria, because it is a great spot to see Heermann’s Gulls, Surfbirds, Turnstones, Rhinoceros Auklets and also some very cool passerines have shown up there from the rain Pine Bunting to Lark Bunting. I also really love birding the beaches of Tofino where you can see beautiful shorebirds like breeding Red Knots on pristine sandy beaches like Long and Combers Beach. Or one can take a boat out to Cleland Island to see Tufted Puffins in the summer.

dgee@postmedia.com

twitter.com/dana_gee

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