Saturday 17 December 2022

A Barn Burner of a Wild Goose Chase

                           

The Tale of the Graylag Goose:

Friday December 9, 2022;12:38AM Local Time, St. John’s, Newfoundland.  I was at the rental car counter at the airport, trying one more time to locate the drivers license I knew I was not going to find.  I had begun the day in Vancouver, British Columbia.  I had taken my photo ID out of my wallet and gone through security.  I had put all my belongings in the trays and onto the conveyor belts.  I walked through the scanner without setting off any alarms.  I gathered what I could on the other side and had to wait for a secondary check of my iPad and camera gear.  Somewhere along the line I left my license behind.  

As I was getting ready to board the plane, preparing for a cross country wild goose chase, I realized I didn’t have that vital piece of identification with me.  Sure, I had other forms of ID to get me on the plane, but if I didn’t find the drivers license, I wouldn’t be able to pick up my rental car that night.  I sprinted back to the security area, as fast as my slow-poke legs would carry me, and desperately asked around if it had been turned in. No such luck.  And I really didn’t have time to make a thorough search, as my flight was boarding soon.  So, I got out my Health Card, which also had my photo on it, and got on the plane.

At the stopover in Montreal I searched again, but found only pockets full of disappointment.  What I was really searching for was a Graylag Goose.  It had been reported two days earlier, while I was in Vancouver searching for a Barn Owl.  I quickly booked a flight for the following morning and that is how I found myself in Montreal despairing about my cognitive issues. It was at that point I started to make enquiries with people I knew on the east coast,(my so-called Jedi Council), through FaceBook and Instagram, to see if maybe someone could help me out, perhaps drive me to the location where this Code 5 rarity had shown up.  

My buddy, Jared, would have loved to take me, but he was going to be out of town on Friday.  However, his friend Sheldon Anthony had yet to go see the goose and was happy to take me, since he was likely going to go down anyway. 

So, how did this literal wild goose chase all get started?  Well, with just 25 days remaining in the Big Year, I was at home in Brantford and knew I had some final travel plans to make.  I had 447 species on the list, plus the Limpkin, which, to be fair, I did see while standing in Canada.  So we’ll assign it an asterisk. I had planned, prior to going for the Steller’s Sea-Eagle, to go British Columbia, so not knowing what lay in store this time around, I booked a flight to the west coast.  I hoped a couple of rare birds had hung around, but instead I contented myself to a couple of birds I missed seeing on any given trip I made out west this year.  Chief among them, a Barn Owl.  But we’ll get to that.

First, upon arriving in British Columbia, I headed to Osoyoos, a small town I had wanted to visit earlier in the year, but time and bird chases didn’t allow for.  Osoyoos was a stand-in location for Arizona, Texas and California in The Big Year movie and I thought it would be fun to drive about and see if I could spot filming locations, including the park that stood in for Patagonia Lake State Park.  However, there was lots of snow on the ground and it wasn’t really possible to match locations as I had done in the Yukon.  I did pass the Husky station that doubled as Phoebes Diner early in the movie, as seen below.




My real mission was to find a Canyon Wren and the environs around Osoyoos was the most likely place in British Columbia to find one, according to Rich, my Vancouver connection.  I had three possible locations to check and got lucky on my first stop.  I drove up to the Haynes Lease Ecological area and hiked through the snow for half an hour, listening to the call of the Canyon Wren, but they are elusive birds and I couldn’t get a photo. 




In fact, in 12 years of birding I have only ever recorded a Canyon Wren in pixels just once, in Arizona, as seen below:


Still, it was species 448 and I was feeling that 450 was finally within my grasp. The west coast member of my Jedi Council, Rich, who is doing his own Metro Vancouver Big Year, alerted me to the presence of a Barn Owl at a local park, and that was my next destination.  It was on my way back to Vancouver that I found out about the Graylag Goose in Newfoundland. I had a decision to make.  I really wanted to see the Barn Owl, as one had been eluding me all year, and wanted enough time to find it.  So I booked my flight to St. John’s for the next morning, giving me a full day in Vancouver to find the owl.  

As it turned out, it only took me 90 minutes that morning, tromping through the snow, to locate the Barn Owl.  It was high in a Pine Tree and cloaked in shadows, but I managed to find an angle to get a few photos.  Another Canadian Lifer, and just one species away from 450, a number I honestly never expected to reach.  I can’t thank Rich enough for so much intel on west coast birds this year.  We only got to go birding once this year but he put me on to at least half a dozen birds that I could easily have spent full days searching for. In some ways, I am very much like Wednesday Addams from the Netflix show, “Wednesday,” only wanting to do things on my own, but as she found out, and I have discovered, sometimes you need a little help from your friends, to paraphrase The Beatles.


Because it was too late to change my flight, I had the whole day to wander and wonder if I made the right decision to wait until the next day to fly.  I did enjoy my final day of the year in Vancouver and even took a nice photo of a Bald Eagle that afternoon.


Now that we are caught up, let’s get back to that once in a lifetime Graylag Goose chase.  After taking an overpriced taxi to the hotel, which turned out to only be 2 minutes away and had a free shuttle, I went right to bed.  I slept well, after a long day of travel and first thing in the morning Jared contacted me and let me know his friend, Sheldon, would be happy to drive me to Herricott to look for the goose.  Finally things were going my way.  

I texted Sheldon and offered to buy him gas and coffee and he gladly picked me up later that morning at the front of the hotel.  Sheldon turned out to be a great guide and an enjoyable birding companion.  We chatted and got to know each other and even stopped at a house along the way to see if we could spot a wintering Blue Grosbeak.  Unfortunately it was no longer there and getting on the road for the goose was a higher priority.

We made it down to Harricott early in the afternoon and by then the skies had brightened, the snow had stopped and it was actually comfortable out.  We scanned the fields and surrounding areas for the goose, but couldn’t find it.  Luckily, Sheldon was familiar with the area and some of the places the goose had been reported from, so decided to drive up to a farm and see if the owner knew anything.  Sheldon located the farmer and asked him about it, and we couldn’t have been in a more perfect spot.  The farmer had seen the goose in the morning and walked us through his sheep pen to the edge of his property on Harricott Bay. 

We looked down the slope and, gosh darn, if that wasn’t the Graylag Goose just sitting there.  Almost as soon as we got our binoculars on it, the goose took off, possibly spooked by the sheep or by a gull that chased it across the bay. I grabbed my camera up and quickly tried to get photos of it in flight, as seen below.



We watched it disappear over the bay, thanked the farmer for his kindness and I told him how much it meant to me to see this wayward European goose. As it turned out, if I had a car and had gone to Harricott  myself, I likely wouldn’t have thought to drive up to the farm and ask for help.

Sheldon, the farmer and me, celebrating the Graylag Goose:


This was the milestone I had been waiting for since I saw the Flammulated Owl for species 400 in British Columbia.  Fitting that I had just come from there to get 450 in Newfoundland.  Satisfied that we had got pretty good looks and could count the bird, it was a Lifer for Sheldon as well, we got back in his truck and headed back to St. John’s.  Well, almost.

As we were heading out of Harricott we saw a lone goose in the middle of the field.  From a distance it could just have been a Canada Goose, but I figured otherwise and Sheldon stopped so I could get a look at it.  It was our goose, bright orange beak and all.  We pulled over, got out and started taking photos.  We’d have been happy with the first look, but this was even better.  Before I could get my scope out for a photo with my iPhone, the goose flew and I got a few flight shots.  This was the first land record of a Graylag Goose in Newfoundland, though I am not sure how many accepted records there are in the rest of Canada.  The ABA only recently added this vagrant species to the list and this one was confirmed as a truly wild and lost bird.  Very few confirmed Graylag Goose vagrants have ever been recorded in the continental US or Canada, so this was indeed a special bird, right up there with the Steller’s Sea-Eagle.  At least this one only took me one trip to see.



 Owls well that ends well, I guess.  In the space of 48 hours I added four new species on opposite sides of the country.  I had the Barn Owl and Canyon Wren in BC and the Graylag Goose and a Cory’s Shearwater in Newfoundland.  The following day both Jared and Sheldon took me back out, looking for more birds.  In St. John’s Jared took me to Cape Spear, one of Canada’s Four Corners, which is the eastern most point in Canada.  I had also been to the most western part of Canada in the Yukon and the most southern point at Point Pelee National Park.  I didn’t get close the the furthers north point in Canada, but I did get within a couple hundred kilometres of the Arctic Circle when I was in the Yukon.

Cape Spear: As far east as you can go in Canada



After lunch Sheldon picked me up and took me up to the Cape Race Lighthouse.  Scanning the water and horizon for seabirds, I scoped a shearwater from the cliff overlooking the North Atlantic Ocean.  After a few minutes of studying the bird in flight, including a dive into the water, and checking field guides and photos, I was sure it was a Cory’s Shearwater.  Rare, but not unheard of from the lighthouse. That gave me 451 species for the year and was species 481 for my overall Canada Life List. 

The View From Cape Race:



I can’t thank the folks who helped me on this and previous trips enough!  The birding comunity, from sea to shining sea, and all points in between, have been some of the kindest and most helpful people I have ever met.  Thank you all.

Saturday December 17, 2022, 2:33PM Local Time, Brantford, Ontario. I am at home, relaxing, birding locally with friends and Sue, with 14 days left in the Big Year.  I am content now that I have passed 450 species, one of only 4 birders in Canada to have officially reached that number in a single calendar year.  But, with two weeks left, I would like to have at least one more chase for one last rare bird.  There are still a few species I haven’t seen that could show up.  You never know.










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