Johnson, N.K. 1994. Pioneering and natural expansion of breeding distributions in western North American birds. Studies in Avian Biology 15:27-44. Jones, L. 1971. The Whip-poor-will in California. California Birds 2:33-36. Oregon Field Ornithologists. 2006. Official checklist of Oregon birds (July 2005). Oregon Field Ornithologists, Eugene, OR. Leaflet. Roberson, D. 1980. Rare Birds of the West Coast. Woodcock Publications, Pacific Grove, CA. 496 pp. Small, A. 1994. California Birds: Their Status and Distribution. Ibis Publishing Company, Vista, CA. 342 pp. Washington Ornithological Society. 2006. Checklist of Washington birds (October 2005). Washington Ornithological Society, Seattle, WA. Leaflet.

About the Author In 1970, Adrian Dorst moved to British Columbia from Ontario, and lived briefly on the Queen Charlotte Islands before settling in Tofino in 1972. Aside from two years spent on Cortes Island in the mid-1970s, he has lived there ever since. He has participated in formal bird surveys, authored books (e.g., Birds of Pacific Rim National Park by Hatler et al.), and was a major contributor to the four-volume set on The Birds of British Columbia. Adrian has been actively involved in conservation activities especially as they relate to preservation of old-growth forest habitat on the coast. This was mostly accomplished through his photography in books, magazines and for environmental organizations, details of which can be found at www.adriandorst.com.

“To appreciate fully any countryside, you have to live with it through all the changes in the seasons.” Elinore Graham

STATUS OF THE YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT IN THE CRESTON VALLEY, BRITISH COLUMBIA, 1968-2006

R. Wayne Campbell¹ and Edward McMackin²

¹ 2511 Kilgary Place, Victoria, BC. V8N 1J6

² 836 Arrow Creek Road, Creston, BC. V0B 1G8

The Yellow-breasted Chat (Icteria virens) is a large, colourful, and secretive warbler with an affinity for undisturbed dense tangles, thickets, and shrublands usually in close proximity to water (Dunn and Garrett 1997). Two populations have been defined in North America, an eastern form (I. v. virens) and a western form (I. v. auricollois) (Eckerle and Thompson 2001). The latter subspecies occurs in British Columbia where it has been reported from widely scattered locations in the south-central interior, the lower Fraser River valley, and on Vancouver Island. It breeds locally only in the lower Fraser River valley, Okanagan valley, and Creston valley (Campbell et al. 2001) and recently the Pend d’Oreille River (Dulisse et al. 2005). The Yellow-breasted Chat occurs regularly only in the Okanagan valley where it is considered a “fairly common summer resident at low altitudes” (Cannings et al. 1987). Outside the Okanagan valley the species has only been recorded with some regularity in the Creston valley (Van Damme 2002) and the upper Fraser River valley (Campbell et al. 2001) on the south coast. The purpose of this note is to summarize historic and current records for the Creston valley and clarify and present new information on its breeding status. Munro (1950, 1958), in his treatise on birds in the Creston region, documented the occurrence of nine warbler species without mention of the Yellow-breasted Chat. The earliest published reference to chats in the Creston valley was provided by Butler et al. (1986) who listed the species as “Casual” with the following additional comments “Most sightings in West Creston. First sighting in May, No nesting record. Latest sighting 22 August.” Specific details for the statements were lacking. Table 1 lists records extracted from ornithological

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databases in the Wildlife Data Centre housed by the Biodiversity Centre for Wildlife Studies in Victoria. Much of the new information has been extracted from historical field notes, surveys by biologists (Machmer and Ogle 2006), unpublished reports (Cannings 1995, Cannings 2000, Environment Canada 2006), and naturalists visiting the valley for birdwatching excursions and submitting their sightings to the Wildlife Data Centre. The Yellow-breasted Chat was first recorded in the Creston valley in 1968 during a survey of colonial fish-eating birds by biologists in the Kootenay River

valley. On 9 June, a loud, unidentified song was heard coming from dense shrub tangles at Duck Lake. In July, the songster was finally seen and identified, as a male Yellow-breasted Chat. It was last recorded on 4 August. There may have been two males present as a chat was heard at several locations around the lake during the summer. Over the next 38 years the Yellow-breasted Chat has been recorded in at least 15 additional years from 10 different locations within the Creston valley. Most of these sites are remote and not easily accessible to biologists and birdwatchers. For example, chats

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Table 1. Occurrence and breeding records for the Yellow-breasted Chat in the Creston valley, BC, 1968-2005.Year Date Location Comments1968 9 Jun-4 Aug Duck Lake 1+ male singing1969 4 Jul Six Mile Slough 1 male singing1971 1 Jul Creston 1 male singing1974 20 Jun Duck Lake Road 1 male singing1978 25 May Old Kootenay River channel 1 male singing1982 11 Jul Wildlife Interpretation Centre 1 male singing1982 22 Aug Old Kootenay River channel 1 male singing1984 12 Jul Duck Lake, north end fledged young1988 26 Jun Six Mile Slough 1 male singing1990 21 Jun Creston 1 male singing1993 22 Jun Duck Lake, along dyke 1 male singing1993 2 Aug Lower Kootenay Indian Reserve fledged young1995 31 May Summit Creek 1 male singing2000 May Six Mile Slough 1 male displaying2001 5 Jun Summit Creek 1 male singing2002 30 May Duck Lake, north end 1 male singing2005 27 May Summit Creek 1 male detected2005 13 Jun Summit Creek 1 male & female detected2005 14 Jun Summit Creek 1 male detected2005 16 Jun Summit Creek 1 male detected2005 16 Jun Summit Creek 1 female detected2005 20 Jun Summit Creek 1 male & female detected2005 23 Jun Summit Creek 1 male detected2006 21 May West Creston 1 male singing

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found along Six Mile Slough were heard from a boat and those at the north end of Duck Lake require travelling the length of the dyke to the railway bridge. Lands in the Lower Kootenay Indian Reserve provide suitable habitat for chats and have not been thoroughly explored, as permission is required to enter. As might be expected, most records are of males singing. There are two breeding records and only a few records of a female being detected (Table 1). All but one record are from dense patches of riparian shrubs (Figures 1 and 2) that include dominant stands of red-osier dogwood (Cornus stolonifera), ocean spray (Holodiscus discolor), willow (Salix sp.), saskatoon (Amelanchiar alnifolia), red elderberry (Sambucus racemosa), and Nootka rose (Rosa nutkana). Tall wetland grasses often form the understory. In 2006 a male was heard “giving full repertoire” on a dry mountain slope along West Creston Road with ocean spray, mallow ninebark (Physocarpus malvaceus), mock-orange (Philadelphus lewisii) and common snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus) being the dominant vegetation. The Yellow-breasted Chat has been recorded in the Creston valley over a 63-day period from 21 May through 22 August (Table 1). The full breeding period extends from 15 June to 2 August with calculated dates of 19 June to 21 July for eggs and 4 to 31 July for nestlings (Figure 3).

There are two breeding records for the Creston valley, both of fledged young observed by the senior author. Campbell et al. (2001) list the first record although they overlooked adding the “red dot” to represent breeding because the record was discovered too close to the publishing deadline. On 12 July 1984, two recently fledged young were watched being fed by adult chats in a willow shrub within one foot of their nest. The bulky-looking nest was composed of grasses and plant stems and was built among stems of willow shrubs about 0.4 m above water. The habitat surrounding the nest site was covered in tall grasses. The second family was discovered in the Lower Kootenay Indian Reserve on 2 August 1993 (Table 1). Two young, estimated at two days fledged, were being fed by an adult in a dense patch of ocean spray, red elderberry, Nootka rose, and willow. Over the 15 minutes they were observed the family remained in the dense growth moving to the interior for more protection. Later the area was searched for a nest without success. The Yellow-breasted Chat has occurred in at least 16 (41%) of the 39 years records have been regularly maintained in the Creston valley, and on average the species has been reported every 2.4 years. All but one of the records is from the Creston Valley Wildlife Management Area. Recently Dulisse et al. (2005) reported a Yellow-breasted Chat nest with eggs near Waneta, in the

19

Figure 1. Nest location and habitat of the Yellow-breasted Chat showing dense riparian shrubs and marsh grasses with maturing black cottonwoods at the north end of Duck Lake, BC. 12 June 2006 (Linda M. Van Damme).

Figure 2. Typical dense shrub tangles where recently fledged Yellow-breasted Chat young have been observed being fed by adults. Along Highway 21 near the Indian Lands, Creston, BC. 16 May 2006 (Linda M. Van Damme).

lower Pend d’Oreille River valley, 75 km west of the Creston valley. That constitutes the third published breeding record in the interior of British Columbia outside the chat’s known range in the Okanagan valley.

Acknowledgements The following people provided information on status and/or personal records for the Yellow-breasted Chat in the Creston valley: Marc-André Beaucher, Eileen C. Campbell, R. Wayne Campbell, Gary S. Davidson, *Maurice Ellison, Jack Floyd, L. Scott Forbes, G. Freeman, Richard Fyfe, *J.E. Victor Goodwill, J. Paul Goossen, *Charles J. Guiguet, Robert D. Harris, Carol Hoar, Bob Isbister, Kathleen Johnson, *Robert E. Luscher, Peter McIver, Ed McMackin, Dwight Moore, R. W. Mosher, Gail Moyle, J. O’Neill, Ross Peterson, Brian J. Petrar, George Russell, Ed Silkens, Brian G. Stushnoff , Stan Temple, Linda M. Van Damme, and Millard Wright. Individuals with an asterisk (*) are deceased but have left a legacy of information in their field notebooks that are in the library holdings of the Biodiversity Centre for Wildlife Studies in Victoria. Literature Cited Butler, R.W., B.G. Stushnoff, and E. McMackin. 1986. The birds of the Creston Valley and southeastern British Columbia. Canadian Wildlife Service Occasional Paper No. 58, Ottawa, ON. 37 pp. Campbell, R.W., N.K. Dawe, I. McTaggart-Cowan, J.M. Cooper, G.W. Kaiser, A.C. Stewart, and M.C.E. McNall. 2001. The birds of British Columbia: Volume 4 – Passerines (wood-warblers through Old World sparrows). University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver, BC. 741 pp.

Cannings, R.J. 1995. Status of the Yellow-breasted Chat in British Columbia. British Columbia Ministry of Environment Wildlife Bulletin No. B-81, Victoria, BC. 10 pp. _____. 2000. Update COSEWIC status report on Yellow-breasted Chat (Icteria virens). Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada Report, Ottawa, ON. 20 pp. Cannings R.A., R.J. Cannings, and S.G. Cannings. 1987. Birds of the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia. Royal British Columbia Museum, Victoria. 420 pp. Dulisse, J.A., S.R. Ogle, and M. Machmer. 2005. First nest record for Yellow-breasted Chat (Icteria virens auricollis) in southeastern British Columbia. Northwestern Naturalist 86:160-162. Dunn, J.L., and K.L. Garrett. 1997. A field guide to warblers of North America. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, MA. 656 pp. Eckerle, K.P., and C.F. Thompson. 2001. Yellow-breasted Chat (Icteria virens). In The Birds of North America, No. 575 (A. Poole and F. Gill, eds.). The Birds of North America, Inc., Philadelphia, PA. 28 pp. Environment Canada. 2006. Species at Risk - Yellow-breasted Chat auricollis subspecies, British Columbia population. www.speciesatrisk.gc.ca/search/speciesDetails_e.cfm? Machmer, M., and S. Ogle. 2006. Survey for endangered Yellow-breasted Chat breeding occurrence, habitat and productivity in southeastern BC. Columbia Basin Fish & Wildlife Compensation Report, Nelson, BC. 36 pp. Munro, J.A. 1950. The birds and mammals of the Creston region. British Columbia Provincial Museum Occasional Paper No. 8, Victoria, BC. 90 pp. _____. 1958. The birds and mammals of the

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OccurrenceBreeding

EggsYoung

Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

Figure 3. Annual chronology of the Yellow-breasted Chat in the Creston valley, BC.

Creston region, British Columbia: a supplement. Pages C65-C82 in British Columbia Provincial Museum of Natural History and Anthropology Report for the year 1957. Victoria, BC. Van Damme, L.M. 2002. Creston Valley checklist of birds. Pamphlet. Wild Bird Trust of British Columbia Special Publication No. 7, North Vancouver, BC.

About the Author Although retired, Ed is active fulltime in volunteer activities that include nature interpretation, wildlife observation, and guiding hikes. He also writes a nature/wildlife column for the local Creston newspaper under the heading “Out There” in which he alerted local residents of the first occurrence of the Pinyon Jay for British Columbia. Professionally Ed worked as a biologist and wildlife interpreter with the Canadian Wildlife Service as well as a science educator on the junior high school level and in the landscape/gardening industry. He has been enjoying some aspects of a forced retirement for 10 years and actively fosters outdoor experience.

UNUSUAL MORTALITY OF A MALE RUFOUS HUMMINGBIRD IN BURTON, BRITISH COLUMBIA

Arthur Schoeddert

PO Box 129, Burton BC. VOG 1E0 Like many residents throughout British Columbia, my wife and I enjoy the pleasure of feeding hummingbirds throughout the spring and summer seasons. So far, we have only been able to identify the Rufous Hummingbird (Selasphorus rufus) which frequents the lone feeder on our rural property in Burton, in the West Kootenay region of British Columbia. This acreage is forested with open spaces and gardens located at 455 m in elevation. During the last week of August 2005, a single male and female Rufous Hummingbird were frequenting the feeder. On 29 August 2005 I found

the body of an adult male Rufous Hummingbird beneath the glass panel of the sliding door and about 2.4 m from the feeder. The head of a Bald-faced (White-faced) Hornet (Dolichovespula maculata) was stuck near the tip of the hummingbird’s bill (Figure 1). Unable to open its bill to feed, it seems likely that the hummingbird perished as a result. Male Rufous Hummingbirds exhibit tyrannical

behaviour at flowers and hummingbird feeders and it is possible that the bird attacked the wasp, thus impaling it on his bill. Birds use a “bill wiping” technique to remove excess food debris which may account for the fact that only the head of the wasp remained intact. The Bald-faced Hornet occurs throughout southern Canada and is not a hornet at all but rather a large (> 15 mm) black and ivory yellow jacket. It is best known for its large gray football shaped paper nest. It mostly takes live prey such as flies and other insects, but also feeds on flower nectar. Wasps frequent hummingbird feeders. The male Rufous Hummingbird may have come into contact with the wasp at a flowering plant or while vigorously defending the feeder. E. Jones (Calder 1993), who captured a female Rufous Hummingbird with a desicated black wasp

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Figure 1. Male Rufous Hummingbird with head of Bald-faced Hornet (Dolichovespula maculata) impaled on his bill at Burton, BC. 29 August 2005 (Arthur Schoeddert). BC Photo 3294.