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Birding Mount Arrowsmith & Cameron Valley
A couple of days ago a fellow birder from nearby Parksville, announced that he had found a male three-toed woodpecker on the slopes of Mount Arrowsmith. This is a rare bird for Vancouver Island! Later he gave out the UTM coordinates for those with GPSs. So today, I thought I would look for it since it is a fairly easy drive on a dirt road.
I got up fairly early and was near the waypoint around 8:30 AM. About 400m from it I stopped and walked the rest of the way. As I approached the point I heard a woodpecker drumming on the uphill side. So I climbed up off the road into the forest and sat down to wait for the drumming to start again. It never did, but I heard unfamiliar woodpeckery-like noises coming from a little further up the slope. I started making pishy, squeeky noises, and owl calls to attract it. And soon I found both a male and female Three-toed Woopecker and they were quite aggravated. I was sure I was near a nest. I made more noises and looked around for a while but gave up. I didn’t want to disturb the breeding success of a rare bird on Vancouver Island.
It was so cool though. I have only had a GPS for a short time. The area where the bird was, was hard to describe. And the coordinated worked like a charm! I had heard the knock on them was that they don’t work in heavily treed areas. Wrong! It works great! And being able to track down and confirm the breeding of a rare bird using a GPS was pretty neat!
With all the noises I was making, I attracted the attention of several other birds, a Dark-eyed Junco, a pair of Varied Thrushes, and a Robin stopped by for a look. In the distance I also heard many Hermit Thrushes and Band-tailed Pigeons. I also heard the ubiquitous Golden-crowned Kinglets.