Island NatureExploring nature on Vancouver Island, British Columbia and beyond

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 [...]

Earlier this week I was enjoying some afternoon sun during my lunchtime walk when I heard the knocking of a woodpecker on a tree. The funny thing was that I couldn’t find the bird that was the source of the sound. I have to admit that I was perplexed. I could see plenty of signs [...]

I’ve been able to enjoy a few lunch-time walks this week and it’s been great seeing some bird activity in the hedgerows. I’m using an older Sigma 170-500mm zoom and hand-holding it – it’s not a perfect lens by any stretch of the imagination and light conditions pretty much have to be ideal to get [...]

As a birder I’ve been aware that populations of certain species of birds have been declining, but I was unaware of how dramatically the numbers of Barn Swallows (Hirundo rustica) had fallen until I heard Dick Cannings talking about it on CBC Radio’s BC Almanac (available in iTunes – episode 2011-08-23 at about the 14:20 [...]

I was up at Strathcona Provincial Park this weekend helping out with the Friends of Strathcona Park Wilderness Festival and had the good fortune to get a closer look at a Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis). Scarlet is a Mountainaire Avian Rescue Society ambassador and is present at many local events, giving visitors a chance to [...]