Vancouver Island Nature Tours

Rainbird Excursions and Batstar Cafe & Picnic have teamed up to create a unique outdoor and gourmet experience. Ron Storey, Batstar’s gourmet chef and creator of the superb meal served last year to a lucky group of guests, will again create a meal fit for an epicure. But first, guests will be escorted [...]

A couple of weeks ago Patti and I went for a hike along the Teodoro Trail in the Alberni Valley. It is a nice trail mostly through second-growth forest to a remnant patch of old growth. There are also a couple of nice views of Sproat Lake. What prompted me to do this was [...]

In mid April I had two tours with people from the opposite sides of the globe. The first was a group of Eskimos or Inuit as they are now called. They were from Rankin Inlet, a small settlement on the west side of Hudson’s Bay. This place is way up north above the treeline. They [...]

It’s called the Angler’s Trail, Stamp Long River Trail, and Sayachlas t’a saa’nim in the Hupacasath language. Don’t ask me how to pronounce the last name. I have no idea! I did find out that it means Stamp Long River Trail! This trail was constructed a year and a half ago by local people with [...]

A couple of days ago a fellow birder from nearby Parksville, announced that he had found a male three-toed woodpecker on the slopes of Mount Arrowsmith. This is a rare bird for Vancouver Island! Later he gave out the UTM coordinates for those with GPSs. So today, I thought I would look for it since [...]

A while ago I published an ad that asked people three questions. One was if they knew where the suspension bridge in the Alberni Valley is. For months after the ad was printed, people were coming up to me and asking where it was. So now, for everyone’s benefit I can say it is [...]

The pelagic trip I wrote about earlier this month is now officially going to happen.
The date of the trip is Sept 7th. It will be the only pelagic birding trip in a boat with a heated cabin and on-board washroom facilities offered on the west coast of Canada this summer.
For those of you who [...]

If you are a birder, you probably keep a life list of all the birds you have ever seen. Many other birders keep a yard list of the birds they have found from within the boundaries of their yard. Others have lists for certain places the visit regularly, for each province, state and country they [...]

Not much content on this one, I’m afraid. Just pictures. Last November my wife and I took a trip to the west coast of Mexico. Before the trip we bought a new camera, a Canon S5. It’s go a very powerful 15x zoom on it. So now I can take bird pictures that are actually [...]

It’s way past time for another entry. I’ve got plenty of irons in the fire these days.
One promising iron is a pelagic birding trip for the American Birding Association. They are having a regional convention in Vancouver and Victoria from 30 August to 6 September 2008. And they have asked Rainbird Excursions to put [...]