Okanagan Cat Count | April 2022
Field notes from Olivia Wilson
The start of fieldwork
Hello everyone, and welcome to my first blog for the South Okanagan Cat Count! I’m very excited to be doing this research with the Stewardship Centre for BC and the University of British Columbia (UNBC). While I haven’t been to UNBC at Prince George yet, I officially made it to Oliver in February, where I will be residing over the summer to complete my fieldwork.
Photo: Olivia Wilson installing trail cameras for monitoring roaming cats, as part of the Okanagan Cat Count 2022.
After a short period of getting settled in, it quickly became time to get to work! With around 85 trail cameras being bestowed upon me over the span of a few days, I began sorting, labelling, and organizing all the equipment. I also needed to determine where I would put my cameras, which meant making maps, driving around to scout out different areas, applying for permits, and reaching out to local community members. My goal was to find 60 suitable trail camera locations within a few weeks, which is no easy feat.
Working with community
This research provides a great opportunity to work with residents and offers volunteering opportunities for members of the public to host trail cameras, help with birds counts and learn more about research and wildlife in the South Okanagan. To connect with the community, I presented at the Brown Bag Lecture Series, hosted by Penticton Museum and Archives, and distributed posters to local businesses, banks, grocery stores, gas stations, libraries, and public community halls in Oliver, Okanagan Falls and Osoyoos. My project was also featured on the Castanet news and prompted a lot of interest in volunteering. I also went door-to-door canvasing to come up with more study sites for the 1st camera deployment.
The first round of camera deployment
With the help of my project co-supervisor Dr. Elizabeth Gow, I visited new properties and deployed the first 60 cameras in mid-March.
The cameras were installed in protected areas, peri-urban and agricultural sites between Okanagan Falls and Osoyoos.
Cameras were set to take photos of cats and other wildlife for 4 weeks, until mid-April, and then moved to 60 new locations. While installing cameras and checking them routinely to change cameras and SD cards, I noticed a lot of cats. Some areas seemed to have cat colonies or aggregations of roaming cats.
Photos: Roaming cats photographed by Olivia’s trail cameras in Oliver, March 2022.
Bird counts at camera locations
Between early March and mid-April, I visited each camera site at least twice and completed 120 bird counts, two at each camera location. Bird counts help me learn about the local diversity and abundance of bird species. Because birds are most active around dawn, I start my surveys 30 min before sunrise. I was able to complete the point counts in a total of 12 days, with 5 hours of birding each of these days!
Some highlights from bird counts included: Ring-necked Pheasant, California Quails, Violet-green Swallow, Canyon wren, Townsend’s Solitaire, as well as Mountain and Western bluebirds. While these may seem common to some, they were all new species to me as we didn’t have them growing up in Ontario, so it was very exciting to see them for the first time!
Photos: A Townsend’s Solitare (left) and a Sharp-shinned Hawk (right) photographed by Olivia Wilson in Okanagan, 2022.
The next steps in this process will be to find 60 new sites to move the cameras in mid-April and start compiling all the photos from the SD cards.
Thank you to volunteers who helped start the project and assist me in the field. In particular, I would like to thank the Nature Trust of BC’s Okanagan crew, wineries, volunteers, and residents for their amazing help during the first deployment! Fieldwork is conducted in the South Okanagan valley, the traditional, unceded and ancestral territory of the Syilx Okanagan Nation. The work is completed with permits from the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development, the Nature Trust of BC, and BC Parks.
Visit the Okanagan Cat Count page to learn more about this research project. Find out how to keep pets and wildlife safe on our Cats and Birds pages.
