A Nice Day for a Walk!

This past holiday Monday, my wife and I decided to take a bit of a walk up to Tugwell Lake, just north of Sooke, to do some birding. As some of you know, the only problem with Tugwell Lake, is this:




This gate was put up, under 24-hour lock, a few years back in response to vandalism of logging equipment. Tugwell Lake lies roughly 12 uphill kilometers from the base of Butler Mainline and the gate.

We started off just before 8am with the idea of beating the heat. Birding the first 4km or so was average for the area, but we had yet to run into the coveted Ruffed Grouse, one of two birds I had come to find. Passing the 4km marker, the brush opened up a little, and suddenly there were birds everywhere, with MacGillivray's Warbler being the surprise leader in numbers. We ended up counting 23 in total, including a couple of what must have been family groups. The odd Band-tailed Pigeon would fly over, as would small groups of Red Crossbills.

Likely the steepest hill of the whole trek winds up to the 8km marker. Luckily, we had broken out the energy shots at the bottom, and were alert enough to notice this little guy and his friend in the open area just past the marker:

I think I mentioned in an earlier post that I am the master of the "record shot" and not much else. Luckily, this Grey Jay (now here's the game, try to spot the bird!) stayed in the open long enough for some admiration and a distant photo. Try as I might, I couldn't lure it closer with either peanuts or trail mix. This was the second bird I had hoped for on the hike, as they have been known to hang out around Tugwell Lake (historically, anyway), and Ian C, Mike McG, and Rick S had heard them there a couple of weeks ago. Kilometer 8 is a far sight closer than Tugwell, so I counted myself fortunate. A bit of a surprise was a very vocal House Wren just off the road. One target down, one to go!

Continuing along, we kept our eyes on the fringes of the road, looking for grouse and bear sign. At about 8.5km, something rustled in the bushes to our right, and a beautiful adult Ruffed Grouse hopped onto a low branch before taking off, leaving me without a picture. Target two, and well short of the lake! We could have trimmed 7km off of our round trip at this point, as I had found everything I wanted to, but we carried on uphill, walking to an unending chorus of Olive-sided and Pacific-slope Flycatchers in the trees.

At the 10km marker, the bird life changed ever so slightly yet again, and all of a sudden the air was filled with the song of Hermit Thrushes. A left turn on to an old streambed leads up to Tugwell Lake itself, where we planned to kick back for an hour or so before heading home. For those of you toying with the idea of a hike, somewhere between Kilometer 10.5 and Kilometer 11, there is a sign nailed to a tree that says "B". Just past this sign, watch for the old streambed.

Signs of campfires past were clearly visible, as were beer cans half-buried in the mud at the bottom of the lake, but even they couldn't take away from the beauty of this little gem! We had the entire lake to ourselves, and found a convenient rock jutting out into the water to lounge on for a while. The birds quickly showed themselves, as we hadn't even unpacked our water bottles before four Common Nighthawks appeared overhead. One of these performed it's full display numerous times, and another thrilled by coming down to the lake to pick a bug off of the surface. Also overhead were two Black Swifts and a Band-tailed Pigeon. Three more Hermit Thrushes were singing, and we located three Yellow-rumped Warblers in the trees, the first I have seen in many weeks.

Forty-five minutes of relaxing was enough, and we headed back down the streambed toward Butler. Nothing new appeared on the way down to the car, but the hills certainly felt much steeper than they had going up. Perhaps I was distracted by all the birds and hadn't noticed.... We found one little bit of bear scat around the 9km point, which wasn't overly fresh, but no bear. We also could not locate the grouse or the jays on the way down, so we had apparently been very lucky on the way up!

All in all, it turned out to be a great day, totalling 35 species, adding 10km onto my previous longest day hike, scoring two much sought after species for the Big Year for a current total of 216, and finding some great places for future birding!

Now about those shorebirds.......