Vancouver Island Nature Tours

You may not be aware of this, but there is a website out there where you can keep all your local bird observations. So you can start a life list, a year list, a country list a province list and so on. You’d be surprised at how avid birders can be. But the beauty of [...]

This year is a landmark year for me. I turn 60 years old this month. I’m eligible seniors discounts, and the Canada Pension Plan. It’s not that I feel old. By body is holding up fine, thanks. But I do feel I should do something special to mark the occasion. Since I’ve always had a fascination [...]

Yesterday we hiked a new trail built by the Tseshaht First Nation and completed in July 2010. The trailhead is at Headquarters Bay on the Alberni Inlet and it extends km to Francis Lake. This trail is seen as part of a long trail that will extend from Port Alberni through to Cowichan Lake. There [...]

March is such a changeable month and an exciting one. It is the transition from winter to summer. The days are getting substantially longer with the amount of daylight increasing by over 3.5 minutes each day. And the weather is in turmoil, from warm and sunny to cold and wintery. And there are big natural [...]

You may be familiar with Maple Syrup from a sugar bush in Southern Ontario, the Eastern Townships of Quebec, or the New England States, but did you know there is a budding maple syrup industry in coastal British Columbia? There are now a good number of producers on Vancouver Island including two commercial ones in [...]

When I was a boy, my grandparents had a wonderful large summer estate on Lake of Bays in the Muskoka area of Ontario. Besides, swimming, boating, water-fights, and excursions of all kinds, we kids and cousins wanted to go fishing every once in a while. But before we headed out, we needed to get some [...]

I don’t normally flagrantly self-promote on this site. But an incident a couple of weeks ago has prompted me to post something about what tour guides such as myself bring to the table for visitors. This article is aimed at some of the local people who may not appreciate this. And sadly, there seem to [...]

There are taller trees. There are trees with larger circumferences. And there are trees whose crowns spread further. But there are no other trees in Canada that combine all three to be the most massive tree than the Cheewhat Giant. It is a Western Redcedar, Thuja plicata, near the shore of Cheewhat Lake on the [...]

I know, the first thing you’ll probably be thinking is what the heck is this? Really, it’s a mapping exercise, because that is the major finished product; a book of maps. When it’s complete, British Columbia will have a very good geographic understanding of where each bird species nests in British Columbia complete with a [...]

The status Oregon Ash in British Columbia is a matter of some debate among botanists. It is the rarest tree on Vancouver Island. But the debate is whether it is introduced or natural to BC. Some botanists think it’s presence on Vancouver Island is from seeds disseminated from planted ornamentals. However one recent authority says [...]