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 to a [...]

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 because [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Every once in a while the planets align, the omens are great and someone gets a really great tour! This happened last weekend for an Asian group who were visiting Tofino from their home in Victoria. Masaya, from Japan contacted me asking if it was too late for a mushroom tour for him, his girlfriend [...]

There are a lot fewer tourists around at this time of year. Too bad. It’s a favourite time of year for me. A nice day, like yesterday, is quite spectacular. To earn a little extra money in the fall when the tours are fewer and farther between, I have been picking Chanterelle mushrooms. And this [...]

Over the last few years Black Bears have been reliably seen on the other side of the Somass River – especially at low tide. But this year it has been different. I think it must be due to the low numbers of Sockeye Salmon returning over the summer. They just haven’t been around much. But [...]

Edited 9 February 2009. Although it wasn’t part of the trips I do, I took some people to the Carmanah Valley a couple of years ago. I didn’t go there very often then. But now I do a few times every year, I am always impressed. It is home to the largest tree in Canada, [...]

It’s not often you find a guest who demonstrates to you how much he and his family enjoyed their trip with Rainbird Excursions. But Micheal Pratt has done just that. He sent all 130 of his photos to me. And some of them are really nice. So I thought I would share them and his [...]