The Cortes Island Museum has been sponsoring two birding events every year for the past two decades.* 2,873 birds were seen during the 2023 Christmas Bird Count, but this number would have been much higher if there were more participants.
“We can only go to a certain number of places where we know there will be birds, and that’s mostly along the coastline,” explained Laurel Bohart, a keen birder as well as co-curator of Wild Cortes.
Continue reading The 2023 Christmas Bird Count
George Sirk explained some of the history and wildlife that he and Kim and their friend Janet Gemmel recently explored during a walk to Carrington Lagoon and Grandmother Grove.
“Janet Gemmel came to visit us for a week. Her husband, Jim Palmer, died last December. He had a very rare lung cancer.”
“Jim and Jan lived out in Carrington, at the Reversing Rapids, in the 80’s. So Jan wanted to take the ashes back and release them there, but she forgot to bring them from Courtenay.”
Continue reading A walk through memory lane to Carrington Lagoon and Grandmother Grove with George Sirk
Wild Cortes came into being as a result of a series of interactions between Laurel Bohart and Lynne Jordan, former President of the Cortes Island Museum. They started in 2005, shortly after Bohart moved to Cortes Island.
“I met Lynn Jordan on on the ferry. She had this parrot, an African grey, and it was dead and frozen. She wanted to find a taxidermist, so I mounted her bird. That was the beginning of Wild Cortes, because we did ‘Ravens Relations,’ and put it up in the museum for a few years. People were absolutely enthralled. They wanted to know if we would have more animals, so we dreamed up the original Wild Cortes, the story of water,” she explained.
Continue reading Fresh look at an iconic display: The Cortes Island Water Cycle
Local naturalist George Sirk was sick for the Cortes Island Spring Bird Count earlier this month, so bird watchers had to rely on a new app to help them identify species. This new app, called Merlin, is one of many topics that he and Nancy Kendel, from the Cortes Island Museum, discussed with Cortes Currents.
The conversation started out with Kendel (NK) giving an overview:
Continue reading Cortes Island 2023 Spring Bird Count & an app called ‘Merlin’
Cortes Island: The results from this year’s Christmas Bird Count are finally in. As expected, the numbers are down. According to George Sirk, this was because of the weather.
George Sirk: it was really cold and it was the day of the World Cup soccer final. I was at home nice and cozy with Kim, having breakfast and coffee and watching this tremendous finale of the World Cup. I had told Gina Trzesicka at the Cortes Island Museum that I was not going to be available until about 10 o’clock because I had wanted to see this finale
Continue reading A very cold but rewarding 2022 Christmas Bird Count
