Island NatureExploring nature on Vancouver Island, British Columbia and beyond

There are several species of songbirds that are notoriously hard to photograph. Most of them are fairly small and constantly on the move. The Golden-crowned Kinglet (Regulus satrapa) is one of these. Often it will respond to pishing and perch for a quick look at you, before heading back into the thicket or branches where [...]

Another early morning and I was on my way north to Campbell River to do my second (and last) Christmas Bird Count of the 2011/12 count period. I didn’t do the Campbell River count last year (substituting it with the Nanaimo CBC) and, since I was able to do the Comox count this year, I [...]

I was up at around 5:30 this morning and, after a quick breakfast, was on the road and heading south to Nanaimo for the city’s 2011 Christmas Bird Count. I have to admit that I wasn’t too optimistic about the weather  but I was pleasantly surprised to see clear skies and stars when I loaded [...]

Last weekend when I spent a day birding and looking for salmon I checked out the small park at the end of Deep Bay Drive for waterfowl. The park is an excellent place to look for waterbirds and often they come in quite close to the shore looking for shellfish. While I had good looks [...]

On my drive to work on the “Old Island Highway” I’ve seen an American Kestrel (Falco sparverius) on a couple occasions in November and now December. With my experience seeing an American Kestrel last year on several occasions throughout the winter of 2009/2010 I wonder if this might be the same bird overwintering on Vancouver [...]

I managed to get out and enjoy a sunny afternoon at the Courtenay Airpark photographing a variety of birds along the way. I have to admit that I’m never really satisfied with my bird photography, but I think that it may have something to do with the poor quality of glass in my secondhand (now [...]

I went out to Goose Spit this weekend hoping to relocate and photograph a Snowy Owl that had been reported there earlier in the week. I didn’t find the Snowy but did get some great looks at another interesting bird that turns up on our beaches in the winter time – the American Pipit (Anthus [...]

With several Christmas Bird Counts coming up in just over a month, it’s worth taking a look at two more easy to identify gulls. The Mew Gull (Larus canus) is a small, white-headed gull with a thin yellow bill, yellow legs and black and white wing-tips. It’s a particularly west coast gull, and in winter [...]

With daylight savings time rolling back the clock and a cloudy day, I wasn’t expecting much this afternoon down at Oyster Bay Regional Park. The light was pretty poor and murky (Oyster Bay is better in the morning when you can sit on the beach with the sun behind you photographing ducks on the water [...]

I was down at Air Force Beach in Comox, British Columbia doing some birding this past weekend and was amazed at the amount of red seaweed washed up on the beach – in places it was at least thigh deep and was so thick that it was holding the incoming tide back from flooding the [...]