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.
Sandra Milligan has been teaching biology at North Island College, in Campbell River, for more than 20 years. She is an avid birder with deep roots in her local community. Someone from Sierra Quadra came to lecture she gave on bird intelligence, at ElderCollege in Campbell River, last fall. This led to Sierra Quadra inviting Milligan to speak at the Quadra Community Centre at 7:30 PM in Saturday, March 2.
“Birds are incredibly intelligent, contrary to what science has believed in the past. They understand what each other is thinking. One of my favourite topics, because I’m a bird watcher, (aka a bird listener) is to talk about bird communication and language. They can have hundreds (and thousands even) of different vocalizations and they really communicate in much more depth than science previously believed to be happening,” she explained.
Continue reading Birds are smarter than you think
Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
High atop a dike hemming the Koksilah River as its fresh waters meet salt, red-winged blackbirds call out as they patrol their territory.
Noisy heralds of spring, the blackbirds return to the Cowichan Estuary each year to nest and protest human intrusion with sharp signature trills from the brush along the riverbank.
Today the interloper is Tom Reid, conservation land management program manager with the Nature Trust of British Columbia (NTBC), who stands atop the 15-foot-high rock embankment he is working to destroy.
The dike, built to fortify farmland stolen from the estuary, is stifling the tidal marsh vital to the survival of a host of endangered salmon and bird species that rely on it for breeding, feeding and migration, he said.
Continue reading Saving the Cowichan Estuary from drowning in a climate-fed ‘coastal squeeze’
