During my recent camping trip to Fort Smith, NT, I identified 68 species of birds plus a few that I couldn’t. It was a wonderful week brushing up on birding skills in a new and exciting territory.
As an artist and photographer, it is far easier for me to identify birds visually. With an artist’s eye, I can usually ID a bird with the help of a good birding guide. One of the reasons I started photographing birds was to help me learn to identify them in the field.
The birding season here is short. Birds start arriving in mid-April and are almost all gone by the end of September save the ones who tough it out year-round. For birders, winter can be a quiet and lonely time without our feathered friends around.
This year I wanted to take advantage of my growing birding skills and see if I could find and identify birds that don’t necessarily make it to Yellowknife. We get a fair number of species passing through however there are plenty more in other parts of the territory.
Travelling south I had the chance to see the American White Pelicans again, as well as a number of new warbler species that I had never seen before. In the birding world these are called “lifers”.
The term ‘lifer’ refers to a bird species when it is first seen and positively identified by an individual birder. Lifer is a designation for a species that a birder has never seen previously, not a returning migrant, new sighting for the year, or other repeat sightings. A bird can only be a lifer the very first time it is seen by a specific birder.
I was fortunate to get a number of lifers on this trip including the Bay-breasted warbler, Black and White warbler, LeConte’s sparrow, Wilson’s warbler, Magnolia warbler, Marsh wren, and Clay-colored sparrow. Other birds I had a chance to see included the ovenbird, Swainson’s thrush, Eastern Kingbird, Sharp-tailed grouse (with chicklets), Northern Harrier, and Great Grey Owl.
I still have a long list of birds I’d like to see including some ducks and other waterfowl that are found mostly in the arctic. Hopefully, I’ll be able to add a few more beautiful bird encounters to my memories of this year’s birding season.