Amongst local birders there is a running joke that if you hear a bird noise that you don't know - it is a Bewick's Wren (Thryomanes bewickii).  
Males have multiple songs that they can sing (from half a dozen to almost 2 dozen depending on the male), and there is considerable local geographical variation on top of that.   Throw in a few chucks, whistles, burrs and trills and you get a lot of variety.  Click here to listen to Bewick's Wren vocalizations from througout their range.

They often nesting in human made things like mailboxes, shoes, hats, nest boxes and other cavities.  Loud and visible, Bewick's Wrens are often hard to ignore neighbours.  They are present at Leaning Oaks from time to time and have raised families here, but we also have had them disappear for months at a time some years, particularly after period of cold weather.  Of our 3 wrens it is the longest tailed and has a distinctive white eyebrow stripe.

To generalize, geese and swans are on the increase North America wide and this species is no exception.  Cackling Goose (Branta hutchinsii ) is recently split from their similar looking, but much larger relatives, the Canada Goose.  They are small geese roughly the size of a mallard, with proportionately short necks, stubby bills and high pitched voices.

For us they are mostly a bird of fall and winter. Flocks of Cackling Geese are appearing on southern Vancouver Island in larger and larger numbers, and their high pitched cackling is beginning to be a common sound as they fly over Leaning Oaks.

Every so often a chattering blue and white rocket speeds through the yard, does a couple of circuits over the pond and meadow and takes off again. Most of our observations of Belted Kingfishers (Megaceryle alcyon) are these brief visits, they would be easy to miss if it wasn't for the distinctive calls that this species makes.  
Every once in a while a Belted Kingfisher makes a stop here, usually perching over our pond, but their visits are usually brief.  

This morning I had a Purple Martin (Progne subis) calling from high over the house, our latest fall record ever.  This species is a conservation success story on southern Vancouver Island.  Nowadays the twangy call of a Purple Martin high overhead is a common noise on southern Vancouver Island, but not very long ago this species had almost disappeared from British Columbia. 
Purple Martins declined in the 1940's likely due to competition for nest sites with European Starlings.  Thanks to the efforts of a group of volunteers, nesting boxes put onto pilings has increased the number of nest sites and the number of Purple Martins has gone up in the province.  It is now the second commonest swallow detected at Leaning Oaks, after Violet-green Swallows.

At dawn this morning the first bird noise I heard was the distinctive "toot, toot, toot" call of a Northern Pygmy-Owl. While Northern Pygmy-Owls ( Glaucidium gnoma swarthi ) have bred not far from us, all of our records are from the fall (late August to October).  We suspect this is because there is a largely undetected post-breeding movement of these tiny owls away from breeding locations.  Unlike most owls, Pgymy-Owls are often daytime active. It is a combination of hearing the birds and finding them as they are being mobbed by songbirds that leads to most of our detections.  Agitated small birds  are almost always a sign that something interesting is going on at Leaning Oaks. 

This subspecies of Northern Pygmy-Owl is endemic to Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands. 

Swainson's Thrush (Catharus ustulatus )is a relatively drab thrush that is found here at Leaning Oaks as a summer time breeder.  What it lacks in colour it more than makes up for in its singing abililities.  The ascending spiralling notes of this species song is one of my favourite noises of spring and early summer.  An added bonus is that it is one of the first songs in the morning and last of the day.  The strains of Swainson's Thrushes singing often accompany my "cookie walks" with the dog as we do our last stroll of the day before bed.  Our records here span from the second week of May until the 3rd week of September.

Click here for a Youtube video of a Swainson's Thrush singing.   This photo is a young bird feasting on Himalayan Blackberries, momentarily forgetting that his kind are skulkers that rarely spend much time out in the open.

The gurgles, caws, croaks, churrs and a multitude of other sounds that the trickster Raven emits oft fill the air around Leaning Oaks. They are our most common corvid and usually seen here in pairs. They are the reason that the suet feeders are tied tightly with twist ties; this was after seeing one fly past the window with the entire suet block in its large beak. I enjoy watching the rolling and tumbling and acrobatic maneuvers that ravens make while flying, including flying for stints upside down. That really is confusing. 

The stories of their intelligence are many. Corvus corax  have one of the largest brains in the bird world and a relatively high number of brain cells. Researchers have set up ever increasingly difficult tasks and experiments to test what processes are happening and how they may learn and solve problems. This short National Geographic video, Genius Bird, shows one set of experiments and GrrlScientist takes us through a number of experiments that go beyond the plethora of observations that point to a very clever bird! 

The role that the raven plays in coastal first nations culture is prominent and complex. Clever and  resourceful, yet a mischievous trickster and shape changer. Raven has been credited with the creation of the world, men, women, fire and is featured in stories, sculpture, masks and dance. Dave's wedding ring is a carved raven that Leah commissioned Tony Hunt to create and if she'd had her way the property's name would have raven in there somehow. The only trouble with that was that most of the raven-ish names sounded a bit hippy dippy! 

Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias fannini ) is most often a "fly-over" species for us.  From time to time, we have a bird stop on the property to check out the pond; or, like last night, stop and roost in one of the trees on the property.  Most often these visitors are immature birds.  Occasionally a heron will stop and forage for bullfrogs in the pond.  Since we seem to be at an all-time high for Bullfrogs, we are hoping that this bird might cue in on this food source and stay around for a while. 
The subspecies  (A.h. fannini) that occurs here is a darker bird than those in the interior, and is considered to be at risk, by both the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) and by the BC Conservation Data Centre.

Wilson's Warbler (Cardellina pusilla) is a migrant breeding bird here at Leaning Oaks.  It  arrives in early April and our latest records run into the first week of October. In spring we hear them before we see them, they have a distinctive song a series of descending loud notes unlike any other warbler we have.  This is a warbler of thickets and understorey shrubs.  Their nests are usually at the base of shrubs, nestled in mosses. These photos were taken yesterday, we had a small fallout of warblers in the yard with Wilson's and two subspecies of Orange-crowned Warblers gleaning insects in the Ocean Spray and Garry Oaks.

Black-headed Grosbeak (Pheucticus melanocephalus ) is a relatively new arrival here at Leaning Oaks.  Our first record was in August 2007 with a single bird coming to one of our feeders for a few weeks.  The next spring we had a number of birds using both the fat and seed feeders and Black-headed Grosbeaks have become a regular bird ever since.  Grosbeaks arrive here in early May and staying through August.  During May and June they are noisy singers, with male songs described as "an American Robin on amphetamines".  Their call notes are also distinctive and many of our August records are based on the call notes, since they sing far less frequently during that months. 

We  have three members of the crow family that visit Leaning Oaks regularly. The commonest is the Common Raven, this species (Corvus caurinus ) is the second commonest species.  It occurs here year round, although to our knowledge we have never had a pair nest on the property, and the majority of our records are of "fly overs" or calling birds from somewhere else in the neighbourhood.  A few times a year we will see birds on the roof of the house or elsewhere on the property.  One of the times they are most noticable is when they are mobbing a predator, such as a Cooper's Hawk, Red-tailed Hawk or one of the larger owls.  

This morning while we were having coffee, two small flocks of Red Crossbills (Loxia curvirostra) flew overhead.  Ordinarily this wouldn't be unusual, but Red Crossbills have been almost absent since late last fall with very sparse records on southern Vancouver Island for the last 8 months or so. Red Crossbills are notoriously erratic in movement patterns and abundance, and it would seem they are starting to make a reappearance.  

To make life more complicated, it is likely that we have a number of different types of Red Crossbills at Leaning Oaks.  Very large-billed forms (like the bird pictured)  are found here from time to time, and are the most likely forms to be seen at our bird feeders.  We think these are mainly pine seed eating populations visiting from the mainland.  Our commonest form is an intermediate-billed crossbill that feeds mainly on Douglas-fir seeds. This is the form that breeds some years at Leaning Oaks.   There are some years when a very small billed form is found here; these are likely the Western Hemlock seed eating crossbill from the west coast of the island. Lastly, a small to medium billed crossbill  that feeds on Sitka Spruce shows up with a sharp , fast, "peek, peek, peek, peek' call note that sounds more like something produced by a flycatcher than a finch.

Red Crossbills in North America have been divided into ten "types" based on bill size, genetics and call notes.  An excellent summary on the current understanding of Red Crossbill types (with recordings of call notes) can be found here. Since it seems likely that there are actually a number of separate species involved, we should be trying to do a better job of documenting call types - now that we have some appearing again!

Brown-headed Cowbirds (Molothrus ater)are our only regularly occurring Icterid (new world Blackbirds) here at Leaning Oaks.  We sometimes have fly-over Red-winged or Brewer's Blackbird, but we have yet to see either of those species land on the property.  Despite the fact that this species is a relatively recent arrival to the west coast,  its  hard to imagine a spring without this species, their liquid call notes and constant head raising displays are a common sound and sight here in May, June and July.  We have a few records as early as the first week of March through to the end of August.  We have been photographing the birds that come to the gravel stream the past month, and we've noticed that the female cowbirds come to bathe often - but we have  yet to see a male bathe. Rcently we have noticed that at twilight small flocks of Brown-headed Cowbirds can be seen flying northward, presumably off to roost in a suitable spot.

Western Tanagers (Piranga ludoviciana) are a summer bird for us.  They arrive the last week of April and stay until the first week of September. Our best looks almost always are when then come to the pond to bath and drink.  To be more accurate, they are particularly attracted to the gravel beds that we built to filter the pond water.  The shallow water flowing over the rocks and gravel are the favourite bathing area for many species, including these tanagers, Purple Finches, Spotted Towhees, Dark-eyed Juncos, Warblers and others. This summer we intend to spend part of a day in a blind photographing the bathers, until then, these photos were "shot from the hip" during happy hour last Sunday on the deck beside the water features.

House Wrens (Troglodytes aedon) are spring and summer  birds for us at Leaning Oaks.  Our earliest record is from the first week of April and the latest is the third week of August. We have records from almost every year we have been on the property, however some years it is just a bird or two briefly stopping in during spring migration.  Some years however, we have birds that breed on the property, using one of our nest boxes.  They aren't easily overlooked early in the breeding season as they are very vocal with wheezy, chattering, complicated songs that are produced many, many times a day.  They are not only industrious singers but ambitious nest constructors as well, with many long sticks and pieces of grass stuffed into the nest boxes, nearly filling them.  

Barred Owls (Strix varia) are new arrivals to Vancouver Island, with the first record on the island in 1969.  Since then it has become a common owl, in a wide variety of habitats.  Barred Owl increases seem to be correlated with the decline in Western Screech-Owls, which have gone from being the most abundant raptor on Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands, to one of the rarest. 
As I write it is just starting to get dark, and I can hear alarm calls from American Robins, Black-headed Grosbeaks, Spotted Towhees and Dark-eyed Juncos - the Barred Owl we photographed for this blog two nights ago is likely back in the yard.

For us, American Goldfinch is a bird of spring and summer.  Our first birds of the  year usually arrive in the third week of April and are gone by the end of September.  This is in spite of the fact that small numbers winter on Vancouver Island and the Leaning Oaks avian welfare system ensures a year round supply of sunflower seeds.  They are among the dozen or so species that like to bath in the gravel filtration beds that we have set up to remove nutrients from the pond and keep the water clear and free of algae.   

Lincoln's Sparrow (Melospiza lincolnii) is a small, dapper sparrow that is a passage migrant here at Leaning Oaks.  Our records are from 20-25 April and the 15-19 of October, although its likely we have overlooked them at other times since they are secretive sparrows that hide in shrubs.  Overall this species has increased on southern Vancouver Island where it is common migrant with increasing numbers also overwintering.  There are no documented breeding records for the island, although suitable habitat exists.  Leah and I found an agitated male during the summer in Strathcona Provincial Park while we were birding for the Breeding Bird Atlas -  which hints that they might be breeding here after all. 

For us, this species has been strictly a spring and fall migrant, noted from the property as they fly overhead, calling.  Our records here span the 1-24 of April and then again in the fall from the 26 Sept-18 Oct.  This photo is of just a part of a flock  of 682 that passed overhead on Sunday; and just one of 3 flocks I saw that day for a total estimated in excess of 1500 birds.    Greater White-fronted Geese (Anser albifrons), like many geese and swans, are increasing in numbers, so it is not surprising that this is the highest number recorded at Leaning Oaks

This is our commonest woodpecker at Leaning Oaks.  At this time of year their loud and varied calls can be heard through out the day.  They are frequent visitors to our suet feeders, where they are definitely the messiest of the species that use them.  Fortunately Varied Thrushes, Dark-eyed Juncos and other species are always around to clean up the spilled suet.  Almost every winter we get a bird or two with yellow instead of orange feather shafts and undertail feather colour.  These are usually hybrid birds between "red-shafted" and "yellow-shafted" forms. 
Northern Flickers use our larger nest boxes as night time roosts, but they are very difficult to see entering  them.  They enter the boxes at dusk and at considerable speed - blink and you miss it.