Spring Showers bring… Screech-Owls? (Part 2)

Tsitika River

This Caddisfly Garden was packed with little Limnephilid Screech snacks

I picked up Ian at the ferry terminal at around 10:30am on Friday. He chucked his backpack in the back of the truck, Rissa, and flew northward up the east slope of the island. We took a brief stop in Qualicum for snacks and in Royston to look for birds visiting the herring spawn.

Soon sated in our marine natural history for the weekend, we continue north, commiserating on how few know of this natural spectacle. Marveling at stories of a time when this was common to most shorelines in BC.

Our jubilation was cut short when we came to the Schoen Lake access roads. Armed with saw and axe, we had planned to cut our way into the park, but upon rounding our first corner we quickly realized that these roads were latticed in hundreds of hemlock and fir trunks. Miles of cutting without a chainsaw seemed unfeasible, so we wandered over to Tsitika to check access into our second study site.

Lower Tsitika Provincial Park and Robson Bight make up one of the lesser known ecological treasures on Vancouver Island

Though we could get to the edge of the park, the trails in the park itself have not been maintained. Neither Tsitika nor Robson Bight are meant for public use. In fact, you are not allowed to access Robson Bight from either the ocean or the land. As I understand it, Orcas scrape their bellies on the beach here, and the fight to protect that area resulted in a ‘no go zone’ for any human. The Lower Tsitika, though not an exclusion zone, sees about the same amount of foot traffic every year. At the edge of the park the trail stops and the old logging road that cuts into the heart of the park is layered in horizontal Alder so thick that it would take days to get through it. Fortunately, there are fragments of old growth that have not yet been cut along the Tsitika River upstream from the park as well. In the end, this where we were forced to do our surveys.

That evening, the drifting misty drizzle funneled in off Johnstone Strait seemed to dampen all but the most determined of Chorus Frogs. Our echoing screech playback met no response through the damp. Even the Barred Owls seemed to be quietened by the late winter mists. After our fourth point the rain really picked up and we decided to stop surveys and drive the road in search of Puma.

The beginning of our surveys on a misty hillside in Tsitika

In the midst of a cougar conversation, a pale blur flitted from the side of the road into a small cedar. I hit the breaks and slowly backed up. Hopping out into the drizzle and flicking on my headlamp I slowly scanned the trees as I walked passed them. As I was thinking that It was probably just some water rolling off the headlights and casting shadows on the roadside, my eyes met two beaming lights at head height on a short cedar.

“SCREECH!” I whisper shouted.

Stuck on the other side of the truck, Ian stumbled out swearing as I stared into the curious eyes of the roadside hunter. Back and forth she gazed at me and then to the woods behind her. Her curiosity soon turned to caution and she flitted off into the night to continue her hunting somewhere less disturbed by us.

“Where?” whispered Ian expectantly. He hadn’t seen a screech in 7 years. Not since Triquet. This was the second one he’d missed this year and I even felt annoyed for him. To his credit, he was nowhere near as sullen as I would be.

Back in the car and starting our cougar mission again, we hadn’t gone fifty meters before another screech-owl flitted off the side of the road and off into the dark.

“Did she come back? Was that the same bird?” I wondered allowed.

“I don’t know. I didn’t see that one either!”

That evening we didn’t see much else. I jumped out of the truck once in a while to chase down moths in the headlights, but without an insect net it was never going to work. What in the hell are these birds eating on the side of the road? I wanted to know. Catching a moth wouldn’t solve this mystery, but screech-owls make people do silly things.

We slowly made our way to the campsite. The roar of the Tsitika made it hard to hear much beyond our own voices, but we pitched our tents beside it and with a tarp over our heads, our dry clothing felt like a nice change.

That night I dreamed of screech-owls singing quietly over a roaring creek. She called beside the river, almost silent beside the din of the water. What are you eating? She cocked her head in response and softly answered with a tottering call. Waking slowly I could hear her above the tent and sound of the river. She whickered a few times and stopped. Then the silence brought uncertainty. Was I still dreaming? This is why you don’t do surveys when you’re asleep I thought. I passed out again and awoke at dawn to wrens and thrushes suggesting that the night had passed.

A hemlock and fir grove held in an oxbow

We spent the next day wandering around the floodplains of the Tsitika and setting up ARUs to listen to the spring sounds of the forest. The primary growth here looked quite different than Carmanah. Besides the unparalleled density of wildlife sign and the steeper slopes with different trees, the color of the forests stood out most. Where Carmanah shone with a vibrant green glow, here the Step Moss gave off a brilliant golden hue that seemed to echo off the trees and fill the forest with an incandescent light. After several attempts to capture this color, we agreed that our cameras could not do it justice.

The vibrant blue of Northwestern Salamander eggs

We passed pools packed with caddis and lined with Salamander eggs. Vegetation changed from hummock to glade to pond to creek and every corner we saw new possibilities for food and forage for screech-owls. I imagined them as kingfishers in these forest wetlands; smashing gracelessly into ponds for insects and amphibians. We walked over a pond filled with Limnephilid larvae, each one housed in slats of reeds. As we strolled above them on a giant spruce log bridge, we watched them let go of the vegetation they were harvesting and float slowly to the pond bed like tinny cylindrical pebbles. What a ridiculous avoidance behavior. I hadn’t seen this before, but I was sure it was a good sign for my new Screech-Fisher hypothesis.

That evening we played our screech-owl songs to a wet and windy forest once again. Nearing our final point, however, we finally got the response we were looking for. Our first screech-owl responding to playback. He fluttered in, on bat-like wings above our heads and alight in a cedar beside the road. Tiny droplets of rain collected on his crown and rolled down off the sides of his bill. The heavy streaks on his breast matched the running water.

Our first screech-owl to respond to playback this year (Photo: Ian Thomas)

As we slowly drove back to the campsite, my eyes flitting between potholes and oil-pan boulders, we reminisced about our time in the Tsitika. Seven years of anticipation had made for an exciting encounter. We spoke of Triquet and Tsitika, owls and caddisflies, things seen and things missed.

“There!” shouted Ian.

“what!”

“Another screech! It just flew up from the side of the road.”

As we hopped out into the rain, I felt a wash of contentment. I watched moths and gnats gathering in the headlights as Ian scanned the roadside for owl eyes. The ephemeral gravel ponds along the side of the road were spilling into the culvert nearby.

Anything, I mused, picturing the still caddis gardens and slow swimming salamanders, hidden in the darkness of the forest ponds we found. In the rain a screech-owl is surrounded by food. I stopped wondering, just for a moment.

They can eat anything they want.