This year some people on Vancouver Island have started a fun little competition to see how many birds people can find within a Christmas bird count circle between December 14th and February 14th and make a percentage against the five-year average of the CBC total for the area.  The competition is a little unfair for Victorians because we have the highest number of participants in Canada, so you can expect a higher species count than other places on the Island.  In fact, Victoria also has the record for highest species total in Canada also and the average count is 138.8 species over the last five years.  I haven't exactly had the best start because I missed a few days at the start being in Panama and then when I participated in the Victoria CBC, I did my usual area, the Highlands, which doesn't produce many species.  Now I am trying to make up ground, so I did a little birding around Martindale Flats today.  The highlights were:

1 Northern Shrike

1 Swamp Sparrow

2 Lincoln's Sparrows

8 Brown-headed Cowbirds

3 Greater White-fronted Geese

That's not a bad start!  I just did a quick count and it looks like I'm at around 55 species, so I'll hopefully get out and do some birding on the Victoria waterfront and perhaps Elk/Beaver Lake to get some waterfowl, shorebirds, and alcids.  I will hopefully do an update tomorrow evening.