For many people, a pigeon is a messy, sometimes noisy urban bird that fouls buildings and statues, whereas a dove is a noble bird that symbolizes peace and love. But, in fact, “pigeon” and “dove” are simply common names for members of the Columbidae family of birds and, although “pigeon” is often the label of the larger species, the names are used interchangeably. This group has a couple of interesting characteristics that set them apart from most other bird species. […] The post Birds Of A Feather appeared first on British Columbia Magazine ..read more

Ravens and their close relatives, crows, are large and very vocal black birds that are likely familiar to us all. There are more than 40 species in the Corvid family in the world, but two or three are native to BC. In older texts, the American crow (Corvus brachyrthynchos) is found through the interior of the province, while the coast is home to the similar northwestern crow (Corvus caurinus). The two birds are so similar, in fact, that in 2020, the American Ornithological Society announced that the northwestern crow is no longer a species, but a subspecies of the American crow and so the numb ..read more

During a tour of the Kilby Historic Site in Harrison Mills, I noticed a series of posters depicting the life of a local woman, Maud Menten, and her family. Maud lived an incredible life, dedicated to science.   Maud was born on March 20, 1879, in Port Lambton, Ont., to Charles (known as William) and Emma Menten. Maud also had a younger brother, Robert.   In the fall of 1889, the Menten family moved to the Harrison River region to pursue employment in the area – William became the postmaster in Harrison Mills in 1890 and in 1891, Emma became the legal owner of 160 acres, housing a gen ..read more

The ability to adapt is what keeps all species, including human beings, moving forward. Unfortunately, an ever-growing human population means our lives are encroaching more and more into the animal world, sometimes resulting in conflicts. The story of BC’s coastal wolves is one for Darwin’s books. These are grey wolves that, in an effort to adapt, have moved to the coast and even swim to nearby islands in search of habitat, food and family. These wolves are only found west of the Coast Mountain Range and have earned the nickname “sea wolf.” Young BC coastal wolf walking along a shoreline at t ..read more

The Alaska Highway, known as Highway 97 in British Columbia and Highway 1 in Yukon, meanders west along the 60th parallel, crossing it five times. Sometimes you’re in BC, sometimes in Yukon, and you might be forgiven for not always knowing which one you’re currently in. Leaving the town of Watson Lake behind, a careful observer might notice after 15 kilometres that a dirt track leads north into the low forest of sub-boreal pine and spruce. Few take that turn, and it’s a pity they don’t, because hidden just a few minutes away, at the edge of where forest and wetland meet, something remarkable h ..read more

On a summer day in 1995, John Harper, a BC marine geologist, realized there was something he was repeatedly seeing from his vantage point in a low- and slow-flying helicopter that made no sense. In the previous years—following the 1989 Exxon Valdez accident that spread 41 million litres of oil along 2,200 kilometres of Alaskan coastline—he’d been hired to do aerial photographing of the state’s coast in order to provide authorities with spill-related contingency data. Following two subsequent BC oil spills, he’d begun—under the auspices of a research project called ShoreZone—doing the same thin ..read more

If there’s one thing we should all have realized from the near daily news reports of climate change phenomena—from fracturing Antarctic ice shelves to record-smashing typhoons—it’s that climate change isn’t some inchoate spectre that may or may not haunt our future. It is happening now, has been for decades, and its pervasive effects surround us, already directing our lives. Whether these make the news or not, British Columbians are very familiar with the face of a changing climate. As much uncertainty as there is around the magnitude of change going forward, however, there’s great certainty a ..read more

The footprints of North America’s mastodons, saber-toothed tigers and camels are long gone, as is the evidence today of prehistoric Chewaucan Lake, whose waters once eroded a series of caves in a remote bluff outside Paisley, Oregon. It was in Cave 5 in 2002 that archeologist Dennis Jenkins heard an excited voice from inside a three-metre-deep pit: “Dr. Jenkins!” He descended a ladder into the dig-site and saw his assistant had uncovered the hoof of a long-extinct camel. As the site expanded in the following years, Jenkin’s crew excavated hundreds of bones, lots of strange spearpoints and 1,80 ..read more

High above the Trans-Canada Highway, where it cuts across the continental divide on the BC-Alberta border, there’s a small fossil bed known as the Burgess Shale. A thousand metres below, cars and trucks roll east and west along a ribbon of paving, oblivious of its existence, or its significance. Yet this tiny paleontological site, measuring less than 200 metres in length and 30 metres in height, has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It has seen more than a century of painstaking research on its high, barren slopes. And three decades ago the celebrated palaeontologist Stephen Jay Goul ..read more

The VHF radio call comes early in the morning. “I’ve spotted a mother humpback with a young one who’s dragging a bunch of nets or something,” the excited sport fisherman says. Immediately afterwards, the Coast Guard makes a call to the Marine Mammal Incident Reporting Hotline, the centre that manages reports on whale and other marine animal entanglements. In turn, the hotline quickly reaches Paul Cottrell, British Columbia’s only certified whale disentangler. In less than two hours after the sighting, a floatplane deposits Paul and his gear in Barkley Sound, on Vancouver Island’s west coast ..read more