As nature enthusiasts here at Wild Birds Unlimited, we know how to appreciate the wonders of life. So when we tell you how wonderful it is to hear our customers talk about their backyard joy and love for the birds, you know we mean it!

As a sign of our appreciation for the special dedication you have as DSC Members, we are opening up our store for one night to give you all a chance at some spectacular savings.

June Hunter, local crow expert, artist, and photographer, will join us for a signing of her 2025 City Crow Calendar. We will also be host to some wonderful speakers from The Stanley Park Ecology Society, who are thrilled to engage with such a passionate community. Additionally, there will be games and prize draws available only for the night!

British Columbia - the best of the birds:

• Join professional wildlife photographer and birding guide Liron Gertsman for a virtual exploration of British Columbia's remarkable bird spectacles. From ptarmigan in the high alpine, to migrating warblers, to the urban birds of Vancouver, Liron will share his experiences finding, photographing and filming our province's most spectacular avian events.

Liron Gertsman is an award-winning nature photographer and conservation photojournalist based in British Columbia, Canada. His work has been experienced by millions in some of the largest museums across the world, including the Natural History Museum in London and the Smithsonian in Washington DC. By photographing the natural world, Liron hopes to educate and shed light on environmental issues, and the importance of conservation.

Using his in-depth knowledge of bird, wildlife and photography hotspots, Liron enjoys crafting unique and unforgettable tour and workshop experiences.

Meet June Hunter, Local artist and Crow Guru
A big black bird flies over your head and you wonder, was that a crow or a raven? The two corvids have a lot in common and are hard to distinguish, at a glance.

This talk and audio-visual presentation, by Vancouver photographer June Hunter, will give you a complete corvid clarity toolkit with all the tips for telling crows and ravens apart: appearance, location, behaviour and sound.

June has been watching and photographing crows and ravens daily for over 15 years and, aside from a collection of lovely portraits, has acquired insights into their personalities, nesting habits, family ties, seasonal behaviour and some hilarious individual quirks. For the last twelve years, she’s been sharing her photography and insights on her blog, The Urban Nature Enthusiast, and since 2016 has been publishing her popular City Crow Calendar.

The goal of every calendar is to delight the reader with beautiful crow photography, make them laugh and help them learn about crows and what they can teach us. The 2025 calendar has branched out to include ravens, offering twelve months of crow and raven photography and tips on telling these corvid cousins apart.

June’s talk is designed to expand on the information in the calendar and will give you all the tools you need to confidently answer that thorny question: Is that a raven or a crow?

Passionate about everything fungal and their evolution, Ludo loves to share the biology, diversity, and evolutionary history of fungi. He completed his PhD at UBC working on fungal fossils to investigate their evolution over geologic time. Ludo is also the lead of the Education Committee at the Vancouver Mycological Society.

Thank you to all who joined us for a fascinating talk about many of the common mushrooms in British Columbia. We learned about how they evolved to what we see today, and what forces drove this evolution.

Our speaker was kind enough to leave us a parting gift of some useful websites and books he recommends:

[LINK] Keys to Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest

[LINK] MycoMatch (MatchMaker)

[LINK] Pictorial Key to Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest

[LINK] Mushrooms Up! Beaty Biodiversity Museum

[LINK] Where and How to Pick Mushrooms

Books:

Mushrooms of British Columbia by Andy Mackinnon and Kem Luther  [We have this one in-store!]
Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest by Steve Trudell
Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast by Noah Siegel and Christian Schwarz
Mushrooms of Cascadia by Noah Siegel and Christian Schwarz
Mushrooms Demystified by David Arora
Mushrooms of Cascadia by Michael Beug

Fall is here and bats are leaving their summer roost sites. One of our more familiar species in buildings and bat boxes is the Little Brown Myotis. Like all BC bats, the Little Brown Myotis is an essential part of our ecology, consuming many insect pests each night. Unfortunately, the Little Brown Myotis is now endangered in Canada. In fact, bats in BC suffer from many threats, and almost half of our 15 species are ‘at-risk’.

Learn more about the Bats in Vancouver with Danielle Dagenais from South Coast Bat Conservation Society.

Darwin’s finches, named after Charles Darwin, are small land birds, 17 of which are endemic to the Galapagos Islands. They are not true finches – they actually belong to the tanager family. It is thought that their ancestor, and closest known relative, is the dull-coloured grassquit, which is found on mainland South America.

Once the original grassquits arrived in Galapagos, they diversified and adapted to the different environments found on the Islands, eventually becoming different species. They famously evolved to have different beaks which are suited to different food types such as large seeds and invertebrates, allowing them to occupy different niches.

Join us and our amazing facilitator Dolph Schluter on a fascinating journey through adaption and evolution.

Dolph Schluter is a Canadian professor of Evolutionary Biology and a Canada Research Chair in the Department of Zoology at the University of British Columbia. For his doctoral thesis, Schluter studied ecological mechanisms driving evolution in island assemblages of Darwin's finch species.

For his fieldwork, he and an assistant spent nearly two years living in a tent on remote and otherwise uninhabited Galápagos Islands. His work was a key component of a long-term study of the Darwin's finches that has been recognized as the most successful ever field study of evolution. Schluter obtained a tenure track position at UBC in 1989, where he played a steering role in building one of the world’s strongest research groups in biodiversity science.

Thank you to all who joined us in learning about these fascinating birds!

Shorebirds are a a diverse group of birds that are commonly found around marine and aquatic environments. They have incredible adaptions that allow them to thrive in inhospitable habitats, including the ability to migrate across continents! Join us for an informative evening to learn more about these abundant birds on our coast.

     

About Our Presenter:

Kris Cu grew up in the bustling city of Manilla, the Philippines and loved watching the Pied Fantails forage around his neighbour's garden. Upon moving to Canada, he completed a Biological Sciences degree from SFU and is now the BC Outreach Specialist for Birds Canada. He works on outreach and digital media projects such as photo, video and podcasts for the organization.

3 Billion Birds Lost in the last decade.

Populations of shorebirds, grassland birds, and aerial insectivores have rapidly declined, while waterfowl and birds of prey populations have recovered from historical lows. These results represent both a call for conservation action and a testament to what we can achieve when we work together. Each of us can make the transformative changes outlined in this report to ensure a healthier Canada for both birds and people.

     Participants learned about the changing health of B.C. birds and how Birds Canada is working to preserve them.

The Warblers shares Canadian information, insights and inspiration on the world of birds and bird conservation. The lively discussions are hosted by Andrea Gress whose curiosity leads to discovering fun facts and useful tips while travelling uncommon flight paths to learn from expert guests. 

Got a burning question about something birdy?

Send in a voice memo for review, and it might get answered!

        Check it out by clicking [HERE]!