DARE TO BIRD

Tufted Puffins are so lovely to look at when at Cleland Island - Photo: Melissa Hafting **UPDATE- THIS EVENT IS NOW FULL/SOLD OUT** I am leading a Young Birder Overnight Trip to Tofino on July 22-23rd and we will do a boat trip with the Whale Centre out to Cleland Island. We have done this trip before on an overnight and had a great time seeing Tufted Puffins, Tattlers and other good birds. Click HERE to read and see our photos from our previous trip report! On my pelagics I have run, we always stop at Cleland Island and we have seen some great and rare species there like all 3 species of Jaegers, Manx Shearwater, Pink-footed, Sooty and Short-tailed Shearwaters, Cassin's and Rhino Auklets, Heermann's Gulls, Red and Red-necked Phalaropes, Marbled and Ancient Murrelets, Ruddy Turnstones, Tattlers,Murres, Guillemots and of course Tufted Puffins. We have also seen Killer, Humpback and Grey Whales, Sea Otters and Sea Lions. Some lucky birders have also seen Horned Puffin here! Thi...

Yesterday I had the most amazing pelagic of my life and we didn't even find a fishing boat!. This has now topped the two pelagics where I've seen 3 Short- tailed albatross and 15 Laysan and 1 Short-tailed Albatross. We left Ocean Outfitters at 8 am on the "Miss B Haven." We first saw a Manx Shearwater that Tom Plath spotted by Cleland Island. Artie Ahier found a Manx Shearwater on August 13 and 15th but after reviewing photos we now all believe that our bird was different. Our bird is much more ratty and worn and missing primaries. This is very much unlike Artie's bird which is very clean and missing none! See HERE . It is pretty cool to know there are at least 2 Manx's out there!. It was really special for Liron and Ilya to finally see a Manx Shearwater it was a lifer for all of us. This is not the reason it is special though.... In 2017 we did a young birder pelagic trip and Liam Singh spotted a Manx and all 3 of us were not looking the right way and we m...

Y oung Birders on Mackenzie Beach in Tofino - Photo: Melissa Hafitng We had a great pelagic trip this weekend in Tofino. We all got to meet young birder Gaelen from Nelson for the first time this trip. He was an awesome kid and birder and fit right into our little group. On the ferry ride over Gaelen got his lifer Pelagic Cormorant but we didn't see much else. We drove straight from Departure Bay to Tofino as we wanted to have time to bird the beaches. Toby's dad had thought he might have found a Spotted Redshank the day before flying by the crab dock so we looked for it but didn't find it. However, we did have a Purple Martin here flying over us, which is quite uncommon. Here we also got Gaelen his lifer Black Turnstone. The beaches were really quiet. We stopped at Wick, Long Beach and Mackenzie. Mackenzie was good though because the youth had fun tide-pooling. They caught and released sculpins, crabs and looked at sea anemones and watched Black Oystercatcher...

We had an incredible pelagic today with Ocean Outfitters off Tofino with beautiful weather.  Our trip had been cancelled last week due to high swells but it was obviously meant to be because we had sun and relatively calm weather. We took the ferry over from Tsawwassen and while on board we had 1 male transient Orca swim by us. We felt the trip was off to a good start.  On the drive up we ended up getting 2 Western Screech-Owls near Port Alberni and they were calling back and forth to one another in the middle of the day which was really rare! Another young birder Joshua Brown had one fly over his head early in the morning while at Long Beach as well!. Western Screech-Owls are blue listed in BC and endangered so this is quite a rare sight but I guess it is breeding season and luck was on our side this weekend. You can listen to a recording I made of the duet of the male and female HERE . We got up early and 12 of us set off onto our trip on Sunday March 17th. Early in...

Black-footed Albatross off Tofino  - Photo: Melissa Hafting On the weekend I went out with 12 friends on a pelagic trip with Ocean Outfitters out of Tofino. Let me first start with our trip on the ferry. As we were having breakfast Bridget Spencer noticed a small passerine flying by after closer inspection we realized it was a Pine Siskin! A new ferry bird for us all. The poor thing was so tired it was sitting and drinking from the puddles on the car deck of the ferry. After we went back to our table and resumed eating Mike Toochin noticed a second passerine fly in this one seemed a bit bigger but we never could make a conclusive id as we saw the bird once more but only briefly. The night before I had chased Kevin Louth's Tropical Kingbird in Delta but I promised the 2 young birders I drove over that we would go look for the reported one in Port Alberni. Bridget needed it for a BC bird so we went straight to the sewage lagoons at Somass Estuary. We saw lots of bear dun...