One of Cortes Island’s longstanding traditions is the Christmas Bird Count; for almost 25 years, local residents have volunteered in a coordinated week-long audit of the island’s bird life. For many years this effort has been coordinated in the field by longtime islander George Sirk, host of CKTZ’s ‘Nature Boy‘ which kicks off a new season at 9:30 AM on Wednesday, January 7, 2026.
Roy Hales interviewed George about this year’s bird count.
Cortes Island naturalist George Sirk knows a lot about frogs.
GS: “A lot of people know me because of my interest in birds, which is really an addiction, isn’t it? I’m just hopeless when it comes to birds. I’m just totally into them. They’re so fascinating. I came from Venezuela when I was 10. My parents immigrated to Vancouver and I couldn’t speak English. I could speak Spanish and I knew a little Estonian and I could understand German because my parents argued in German.”
“So there I was in Vancouver, a little weird guy 10-years-old, and I met some other weird young people too, what we would call nerds.”
“They were into frogs. Jim Palmer was one, Lowell Orchid, that’s another. Jim just passed away actually in December, but Lowell’s still with us all here. We used to collect frogs very close to Kits Beach, the Lacarno beach area. It used to be a military base at one time. So there used to be a lot of empty properties, fields and it got very wet in the wintertime. The tree frogs would all go in there and have a great time.”
Continue reading George Sirk: Frog Stories
