Island NatureExploring nature on Vancouver Island, British Columbia and beyond

Guest Post by Vijay Somalinga Last summer I was having a conversation with a friend about the native flora of British Columbia. I was quite disappointed when I learned that most of the the flower pictures I had taken that summer turned out to be invasive and non-native species. It was during this conversation that [...]

Guest post by Marcie Callewaert Every summer a Barred Owl (Strix varia) visits our property. He makes himself known with his haunting calls each night and his bold presence perched on a branch or fence post during the day – watching for his next meal. This year, “Hooty” as we have dubbed him, brought a [...]

Guest post by Chris Carter If I had been asked for a list of photogenic wild flowers a few weeks ago, Salal (Gaultheria shallon) would not have been near the top. Salal is best known for its bright evergreen leaves, always in demand by the florist trade. Walking back from the beach last week, I [...]

Guest post by Marcie Callewaert The Somenos Marsh is a renowned bird watching location just north of Duncan, British Columbia. It is home to hundreds of bird species who are year-round residents, and many that just stop by on their migration path. Besides birds; muskrats, beaver and river otter also reside here. The Somenos Marsh [...]

Organizers of a wildlife census in Metchosin, a district on the southern tip of British Columbia’s Vancouver Island, are counting results from the reports of fifty taxonomic experts, participants in Metchosin’s April 30th BioBlitz. The local BioBlitz, like hundreds of others that have been conducted around the globe in the last year, took a 24-hour [...]

I was up at around 6 am yesterday to make the drive down to meet a group of birders doing the 2010 Nanaimo Christmas Bird Count. As I scraped the frost of the windows of the car I was hopeful – the sky was clear and it actually felt fairly mild. Weather on Vancouver Island [...]

Slugs are notoriously hard to photograph – the challenge is to have enough depth of field (area of the image in focus) that both the near eye spot and the body are sharp and crisp. Since slugs are often prefer to avoid full sun you end up trying to capture an image in low light [...]

While in the Lower Mainland this weekend I was driving from Terra Nova Park (where I unsuccessfully looked for a Scrub Jay) to Garry Point (where I failed to find a Franklin’s Gull) I came upon the astounding sight of a playing field filled with thousands of Lesser Snow Geese (Chen caerulenscens). I think that [...]

I was over on the Lower Mainland today and managed to get a little bit of birding in before having to catch the ferry back to Vancouver Island. I had just enough time to check out two reports on the Yahoo Vancouver Birding list serve – a Scrub Jay that was reported at Terra Nova [...]

Pacific Rim National Park Reserve is well known for its long sandy windswept beaches. Every year over 800,000 people visit this spectacular national park. If you truly want to experience the dramatic power of this landscape, the challenge is finding a place without many people. When visiting Pacific Rim I try to plan my walks [...]