Birding at Buttertubs

Open water at Buttertubs Marsh from the vantage point of a viewing tower. No ducks here!

Yesterday I headed down to Nanaimo to pick up my brother-in-law at the ferry and planned the day to include a little morning birding at Buttertubs Marsh. Buttertubs is accessible in a couple of places but I find that the easiest access point is just off the Nanaimo bypass at Jinglepot Road. You don’t have to weave your way through a maze of side streets to get to this entrance and there’s lots of parking.

Buttertubs has changed quite a bit since the days back in the 1990s when I was a Vancouver Island University (then Malaspina University-College). There’s still plenty of excellent bird habitat in the form of open water, cattail marshes, hawthorn thickets and dead elms(?) oaks for perching raptors. However, signs of “progress” abound and a large new development called Hawthorne Corner now butts up against one side of the marsh. Vally Oak Estates, an older trailer park runs along one corner, and an older seniors complex against another side.

Birding Around the Marsh

I spent a good hour and a half walking around the marsh, did some birdwatching and recorded an upcoming podcast of Discovering Nature (this episode will be available on Sunday, December 27). I was surprised at the low number of ducks on the water – given that this is a large body of fresh water in the middle of Nanaimo there should have been more than a half-dozen Hooded Merganser, one Common Merganser, a couple of Bufflehead and a dozen Mallard. The dearth of ducks was made up by plenty of sparrows feeding at stations along the trail that loops around the marsh. The highlight birds of the day were a number of Marsh Wrens in the cattails and a good view of an over wintering Anna’s Hummingbird.