228 Sage Thrasher

Sage Saga

Since 2020 I have been the Provincial Coordinator for Important Bird & Biodiversity Areas (IBA) in B.C. In a nutshell what that means is its my job to work with communities across the province to monitor and protect sites which meet globally agreed upon standards as an IBA (for more on what that means see #145 Rock Sandpiper). What does this have to do with Sage Thrasher? For the first ever survey I coordinated back in 2021 I worked with a group of 22 volunteer birdwatchers to comprehensively survey a hilly shard of grasslands in the Okanagan known as Chopaka Customs. Chopaka is famous for being one of the few places in Canada that still hosts breeding Sage Thrasher. These handsome gray furtive birds skulk beneath canopies of knee high sagebrush where they hunt insects. Once called Mountain Mockingbirds, what they lack in looks they make up for in song; males will borrow notes from a multitude of neighbouring songbirds and reorganize them into an unending cascades of song. One male was recorded singing for 22 minutes straight without break!

Like many sagebrush and other grassland dependant species, Sage Thrasher are not doing well. Listed as Endangered in Canada, there are thought to be between 7 and 36 adult birds nationally (source: COSEWIC). Grasslands are one of the most at risk ecosystems globally, largely due to the relative ease with which we are able to convert them into agricultural land. Across North America, more than 60% of historic grasslands have been converted. Subsequently, grassland birds are one the fastest declining groups on the continent, with an estimated decline of 40% since 1966 (source: Audubon North American Grasslands & Birds Report). In B.C., grasslands are recognized as one of our most at-risk ecosystems, with thousands of hectares lost over previous decades to urban sprawl, agriculture, and industry. Thankfully, the coalition of communities aware of this problem and actively working to solve it is as diverse as the species which rely on grasslands in the first place. Ranchers, First Nations, conservationists, hunters, bikers, birders and butterfly enthusiasts are fighting tooth and nail to protect and maintain healthy grassland ecosystems across the continent. Here in B.C., the Grasslands Conservation Council of B.C. has rallied diverse support for projects in every one of the province's grassland areas. In the Nicola Valley, the Syilx community of Upper Nicola have been working alongside the Burrowing Owl Conservation Society of BC to reintroduce the once extirpated Burrowing Owl and safeguard their grassland home.

Because of these threats to grasslands and the small population of Sage Thrasher therein, we were able to get funding from B.C. Field Ornithologists to get a group together to go check in on the Chopaka population and see how they were doing. What resulted was a herculean effort as groups of 2-3 volunteers spread out across hilly, thorny, cactus covered grasslands. In a shocking, disappointing, and not altogether unexpected twist, we did not find a single Sage Thrasher between the 22 of us. That's not to say we found nothing; 1236 individual birds counted of 93 species, 12 of which were species at risk. Our true consolation was a count of 16 Lewis's Woodpecker, a stunning crimson, green and gray woodpecker with a Special Concern status in Canada due to its relatively small national population of about 775. Given that, while our efforts documented a concerning lack of Sage Thrasher, a trend which was mirrored throughout the province that year, we had managed to confirm the site still contained an IBA worthy population of Lewis's Woodpecker.

So, why am I rambling on about a survey 3 years ago 280 km away from Vancouver Island? Well, because despite their small northern population and necessity for sagebrush, these weirdos wander, and that's exactly what one did on May 14 right into the observant embrace of my buddy Joachim Bertrands and Sean McElaney on their tireless quest to bird the shit out of Jordan River this year. As best I can tell this was around the 8th time a Sage Thrasher had ever been seen on Vancouver Island so needless to say I dropped what I was doing and took off on the 1 hour drive as fast as the laws of physics and my KIA would allow. For those of you who have never chased a bird, there's a little anxiety formula that comes into play, and it breaks down something like;

( Rarity of bird ÷ Duration of Average Sighting ) + Number of Previous Attempts x Drive Distance

This is a drawn out way of saying that for that entire hour long drive I was nail bitingly anxious and on the edge of my seat. To my detriment though, birds don't care how much you want to see them, and try as we might Ann Nightingale, Rosa Munzer, the original two finders and I were unable to find any sign of the bird. Just as we were about to leave, I spotted a bird of about the right size flit across the river into the industrial log sort behind town. We searched the area for a bit but ultimately decided that for such a skittish bird an active log sort seemed like an unlikely spot to spend time. Others did not make that same assumption, and so shortly after getting home to get back to work I got the text that the bird had been refound in said log sort, viewable as a distant speck from the other side of the river. Frustrating as that might be I had taken all the time I could off work for that day and wasn't able to commit another 2 hours to driving back to Jordan River, and by the next morning it had disappeared never to be seen again.

OR SO WE THOUGHT (kind of). In an unexpected and deeply appreciated turn of events, a second Sage Thrasher materialized a week later and 26 km East of Jordan River at a small but well-loved noodle of land called Whiffin Spit. Very likely this will not be the last time I mention rare birds at Whiffin. This is the same spot Ann had a Black-throated Sparrow during her big year in 2015, a bird which should have been in Nevada but which instead Roger Beardmore turned up here. Today though it was a godsend of a Sage Thrasher found by Randy Dzenkiw as it foraged between the seaweed wrack, driftwood, and fields of Pacific Glasswort. When it was first found I was actually just wrapping up filming Ruffed Grouse at a7úsayagwem / Naka Cree (see my last post), but thankfully was just about to head out when the report came in. Ironically in the same fashion Ann had driven 6 hours back to Victoria for her Whiffin sparrow in 2015, I was doing the same for a thrasher. With lots of coffee and few pitstops, Carter and I took off down island (see formula above re anxiety).

The Whiffin search was as easy as Jordan River was hard. Pulling up we jogged half the spit to the point where the bird had last been seen and, catching a single note from the field of glasswort, watched as this long-awaited nemesis hopped up on a log and starred us down. Great birds often depend on great company and such was the case here. First and foremost I was sharing the experience with my good friend Carter, a guy I met in 2020 in an online birder pandemic support group, learned to love when we met face-to-face for the first time as the only non-couple members of a birding trip to Puerto Rico with said online group in 2023, and was now dragging up and down the island I call home chasing birds such as this thrasher that were dirt common where he lived in Idaho but which he indulged me in nonetheless. Second in company was a group of younger birders from the UK who were checking out the area and hadn't heard of the thrasher but who were ecstatic to follow us as we jogged past them and let them know what was up ahead. Third were the new parents with their 4 year old daughter and dollar store optics who we lent our binoculars to and helped get good looks of the thrasher. All in all by the time we turned to leave we had shown something like 18 people the bird, none of whom had known of it before talking to us, and all of whom were excited to be let in on the secret of this rare visitor to our neck of the woods. For a species I had wanted to see for the better part of a decade I took very few photos, so much like the photo above of the Jordan bird I could not find by a birder who could, here is the Whiffin bird by the birder who found it.

Blah blah blah rushing to get Carter on the ferry home blah blah blah he should move to B.C. blah blah blah. Eastern Phoebe's aren't supposed to be west of the Rockies, one doesn't know that, it's come to the same egg farm 15 minutes from my house for 5 years now, I saw it. Not every bird has a great story, I'm sorry.