Last Monday, Sep. 11, we travelled from Victoria to Tofino
with a slight diversion to Deep Bay. We
spent the first couple of hours at Swan Lake.
We enjoyed our walk around the lake but didn’t see anything too
interesting (we weren’t expecting any new birds) and then drove up island. A large number of jaegers had been reported
from Deep Bay the previous day so we figured it was worth a couple of hours to
check it out. There were a large number
of Bonaparte’s Gulls in the bay along with Surf Scoters, White-winged Scoters,
Common Loons and Red-necked Grebes. We
did see one jaeger harassing a gull but it was too far away to identify it.
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| Bonaparte's Gull |
Tuesday was a free day to bird the Tofino area as our
scheduled pelagic had been moved to Wednesday.
We were focused on shorebirds and gulls and visited most of the
accessible shoreline.
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| Ray and Phil looking for shorebirds |
Our highlight was
a Western Gull (#480)which was
visible from our motel. We went down to
the harbour for closer looks and the gull was cooperative enough to hang
around. On the BC coast, Western Gulls
hybridize with Glaucous-winged Gulls and most “Westerns” are considered by some
to be of dubious lineage. We carefully
checked out our gull – yellow-orange orbital ring, smudge-free head, dark
mantle, deep black wing tips – and felt this was as good as we were going to
get!
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| Western Gull |
On Wednesday, we went on our much anticipated pelagic
trip. Ray had spent a great deal of time
organizing it and we were relieved that the weather and surf conditions looked
good. Along with us for the trip were
three keen Victoria birders – Rick Shortinghuis, Jeremy Kimm and Jeremy Gatten
as well as Charles Smith from Toronto. The
Tofino Whale Centre, with Captain Mike and spotter Artie, dressed us up in
red survival suits and we departed about 7:15 am.
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| Heading out from Tofino |
As we headed out to sea, our first sea birds were Sooty
Shearwaters. Soon we had our first new
bird – Pink-footed Shearwater (#481)
– which was soon followed by Cassin’s
Auklet (#482).
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| Pink-footed Shearwater |
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| Cassin's Auklet |
Birds were rather
sparse but we did spot Red-necked Phalaropes (we checked them all out as we
were looking for Red Phalaropes) as well as some Rhinoceros Auklets. Further out, we began seeing Sabine’s Gulls (#483).
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| Sabine's Gull |
After about 50 kilometres, we reached an underwater canyon
which was supposed to be good for birds.
There wasn’t much around but we travelled along the canyon for a while
and eventually a Black-footed Albatross
(#484) found us. We continued out to
almost 70 kilometres from shore where the water was over 300 metres deep. We dropped some “chum” (fish guts and pieces
of fish) hoping the birds would find it.
While waiting for the birds to find the chum, we saw a distant but distinctive Fork-tailed Storm-Petrel (#485). We were just about to leave when an albatross flew in followed by a Parasitic Jaeger (#486). Eventually, a few other albatrosses joined in
along with a four shearwaters.
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| Black-footed Albatross |
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| Parasitic Jaeger |
The ride back was fairly quiet but we did come across 3 Tufted Puffins (#487) swimming with a
group of Cassin’s Auklets.
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| Tufted Puffin |
About ten miles from shore, we spotted our first (and only)
whales – a large group of Humpback Whales.
The whales were surface feeding and we spent some time in the midst of a
group of eight of them. The other mammal
highlight was seeing Sea Otters resting on their backs in the kelp beds nearer
shore.
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| Sea Otter |
After 7 ½ hours on the boat, it was a strange feeling coming
back to shore. We had enjoyed great
weather, calm seas, and great views of a few new birds as well as a very
memorable Humpback experience; on the other hand, we hadn’t seen as many new
birds as we had hoped for. This trip was
kind of a “make it or break it” outing – if we had a great day, we would have
no problems meeting our goal of 500 species; if we didn’t do the trip (because
of weather which happens often with pelagics), we would have great difficulty
making our goal. We certainly didn’t “make
it” but we didn’t “break it” either though we have our work cut out to find 12
more species.
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| Our route on the pelagic |
With that in mind (and after an ice cream to refresh us), we
went out in search of a new bird. I had
asked Jeremy Kimm where we were most likely to find a Pacific Golden-Plover and
he suggested the airport. Shortly after
arriving at the airport, we found two Pacific
Golden-Plovers (#488). I forgot my
camera at the motel so no photos but we did spend quite a while checking out
all the field marks. One was a classic
juvenile (as described by Sibley) while the other was a bit different but
definitely a Pacific Golden-Plover.
Next week, we will head to the East Coast for the third (and
hopefully final time). We will spend
most of our time in Nova Scotia as we have a couple of whales to get and it is
also a good time for vagrant species.
With luck, we will be in position to accomplish our goal with a Whooping
Crane expedition to Saskatchewan and a ferry trip to Haida Gwaii in
mid-October.
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