Birding the Pacific Rim
On the weekend I went birding with a couple from Widby Island in Puget Sound Washington State. It’s not very often I give tours to people as local as they are. Heck, they live on the American side of the border from Vancouver Island! But they wanted to get away for the weekend and they came up here.
Cathy was the birder. Her husband, Randy tagged along. I lent him a spare pair of binoculars for the excursion.
Cathy wanted to see shorebirds, or sandpipers. The best area to see them is on the Pacific Rim in the Tofino and Ucluelet area. So we drove out there.
We got to see a variety of sandpipers, Least Sandpipers, Western Sandpipers, Black Oystercatchers mostly. It was really foggy that day. So we were challenged in seeing very much. We had great looks at an Osprey diving for fish at Chesterman’s beach. The highlight of the trip, however, Â was the Solitary Sandpiper we found at the sewage lagoon near Wickanninish Beach. I’ve only seen a few in all my years of birding on Vancouver Island. And for them it was another life bird to add to their list.
