A tiny bit of birders’ paradise off the corner of Oak Bay continues to provide with an extremely rare sighting Sunday (Nov. 5).
Longtime watch leader and bird expert Geoffrey Newell was out enjoying a morning at McMicking Point when movement captured his attention. He quickly spotted a small yellowish bird and identified it as a female orchard oriole. The songbird normally lives in the eastern United States, Newell said in a phone interview Monday from the site where the oriole was still putting on a show.
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“Birding is like going on a treasure hunt, you just never know what you’re going to see and every once in a while you’re going to get rewarded,” he said.
This orchard oriole is an extreme rarity, only recorded one other time in Greater Victoria and that was on private land. So this was the first one the public could flock to, and they did, Newell said. Close to 100 people from Vancouver and up Island arrived, some landing as quickly as 20 minutes after Newell posted it to a Greater Victoria WhatsApp group and eBird.
“People have come quite a ways to see this bird, it’s an exciting feeling when you find something like this,” he said.
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Some birds will keep migrating and others stay for days.
“It’ll be interesting to see how long it stays,” Newell said.
A passionate birder since childhood, Newell works as a karate instructor alongside his brother – their school is appropriately named Karate Brothers – which leaves mornings free to go out and pursue his passion of birding.
His odds do seem to go up on the little point of land off Radcliffe Lane – facing Trial Islands and not far from the Victoria Golf Course. As the south-eastern tip of Vancouver Island, a lot of migrating birds funnel through the point of land.
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He’s had other rare finds in the same area including an Oriental green finch – that was a first record for Canada – a king eider, Arctic loon and black-headed gull, another bird usually found on the east coast.
Newell leads bird walks occasionally with the Capital Regional District and once a month with the Friends of Uplands Park. The next one is the last weekend of November. Watch for it online at friendsofuplandspark.org.
