Birds of Old Crow

I really like the fence by this cabin up Crow Mountain Road

So I'm twenty-five years old and I like bird watching. Funny maybe, but it's true. I have really liked birds since I was a little kid, but I got especially interested in observing and identifying birds last summer while tree planting. One of my campsites was on a beautiful point of a lake (between Burns Lake and Houston) where we were surrounded by different types of birds. We watched kingfishers swoop down and catch fish from the lake, saw cedar waxwings land in the trees near our tent and watched through binoculars as a group of crows inhabited an incredibly high and dead tree on the opposite side of the lake.

An evening ski with my neighbours turned into a great bird watching trip and so in this post I'll tell a bit about the birds we saw and heard. I didn't get any photographs of these birds and I only want my own photos on my blog, so I apologise for the lack of photos of these Old Crow birds. I'll work on taking some.

Grouse, not ptarmigan

I'll start by mentioning that in my post about hoar frost where I mentioned the bird in the above photo, I was mistaken in what it is. It's a grouse, not a ptarmigan. I saw eleven ptarmigans on my walk yesterday. They are totally white in colour, except for their black beaks and small black eyes. They camouflage into the snow remarkably well and have large, feathered feet so that they float on the snow. In summer they are brown to camouflage into the summer landscape.

The first bird we saw on our afternoon ski was a boreal chickadee. They looked similar to the black-capped chickadees from southern Canada, but have a reddish-brown chest instead of being all black, white and grey. The ones we saw were puffed up and we revelled in the fact that they can survive -40s weather being so small. Their metabolisms must be insanely high in winter.

Walking by the lake near my house

A new bird for me was the white-capped crossbill. We saw a flock of them fly from the spruce trees just off the trail from us. Their bills are apparently especially made for breaking open spruce cones for eating at any time of the year.

Twelve kilometres later, at the bottom of a super fun long downhill part of the trail, we heard a great horned owl. Their majestic and almost eerie calls are a mating call apparently. The loop we skied took much longer than it apparently usually takes, as we were breaking track for most of the trail, sometimes through 3 feet drifts. It was a beautiful ski though, and I was happy to see a few new species of birds and learn more about more common ones.

Where I live

Despite the town's name of Old Crow (named after a respected chief called Crow May I Walk, Deetru' K'avihdik) there are far more ravens around than crows. Every day I see and hear ravens and they are even larger than the ones in Northern BC or Haida Gwaii (and that's big!). The other day I was walking my pup off leash, when a raven came out of nowhere and swooped down inches away from the pup and then swooped back up into the air. I asked my neighbours about this and they explained that ravens aren't birds of prey, but are scavengers and will get food any way they can. We also discussed how ravens are known as 'The Trickster' in some First Nations mythology and that ravens truly are teasers and instigators of trouble. They told me that ravens have been know to fly down and peck the bums of land animals just for fun and to torment them.

Sunset beside the air strip

 Tomorrow I leave Old Crow for  a few days, so my next post won't be until next week. Mahsi Cho (thank you) once again for reading and watch out for those sneaky ravens if you have any in your neighbourhood!

Warm Regards from Old Crow,

Haley