I love the colours of our Cariboo winter.
The reds are electric, the oranges are intense, the lime green is exotic, and the occasional golden glimmer in the trees stirs a kind of fever. Bird fever!
With binoculars clamped to our eyes, Cariboo birders pan the forests, the fields, and the feeders for red heads and breasts, orange flashes of wing and tail, lime-green beaks and golden streaks of feathers, each person dreaming of that lucky strike: the colour that shouldn’t be there.
For me, that colour would be blue. Azure to be exact. That is the vibrant hue of a male mountain bluebird. Alas, this rare blue nugget does not brighten our Cariboo winter.
According to the editing checklist for Cariboo-Chilcotin birds, there is no record of a mountain bluebird in December or January. The same checklist, however, does say two males and a female were recorded along Signal Point Road on November 15, 2011; but they had vanished by November 29. This is the only record.
If you want the company of mountain bluebirds during our winter breaks, you’ll have to head south, but not as far as you might think. According to Melissa Hafting, eBird reviewer for the Cariboo region, small numbers overwinter in Vancouver, the Fraser Valley, the Okanagan and on Vancouver Island.
Realistically, if a mountain bluebird is high on your new year’s wishlist, then you will have to journey further south than Vancouver. According to an up-to-date eBird map, from November through February, the highest concentrations of mountain bluebirds can be found well away from the coast in the lower elevations of Nevada and New Mexico.
For example, about 3,000 km from Williams Lake, the open savanna-like stretches of the pinyon-juniper forests of New Mexico can be dense with bluebirds during the winter.
Pinyons are low-growing, rounded, drought tolerant pine trees. These are mixed with various species of juniper, shrubs, and grasses, of which the Rocky Mountain juniper, big sage, rabbitbrush, and needle and thread grass would be most familiar to Cariboo folk.
If you take the trouble to visit New Mexico this winter, look for junipers. Insects are less plentiful in the winter, so mountain bluebirds and many other berry-eating birds aggregate in locations heavy with bluish-purple juniper berries.
Of course, if you are patient, the mountain bluebirds will soon be back in Williams Lake. The earliest record for a mountain bluebird is February 18, 2015, when a single male was spotted on the Dog Creek Prairie. Eight days later, on February 26, a small flock arrived in Canoe Creek, eight to be exact.
Normally, according to data posted on the editing checklist, serious numbers of bluebirds do not return until the middle of March.
In the meantime, there are plenty of colourful birds that do regularly visit our area and these birds are highly photogenic. This morning outside my window, for example, I saw the blazing red crest of a pileated woodpecker, the bold orange plumage under a northern flicker’s wings and tail, the distinctive lime green of an evening grosbeak’s robust bill, and lots of golden-yellow finches in the crab apple tree.
Am I sad there are no mountain bluebirds? Not terribly. For me, mountain bluebirds are the harbingers of spring. I wouldn’t want it any other way.
Amateur birder Loyd Csizmadia currently coordinates the Mountain Bluebird Program on behalf of the Williams Lake Field Naturalists. If you would like to become a member of the Williams Lake Field Naturalists, contact Sue Hemphill at shemphill@xplornet.com or stop at the Scout Island Nature Centre or get a form from the web site: https://williamslakefieldnaturalists.ca/
