Canada

In the summer holidays we went to the west of Canada.

We stayed on the coast around Vancouver and on Vancouver Island in the first half of the trip. In Vancouver the areas we visited were: Stanley Park (where we saw Raccoons), Reifel (where we saw Sandhill Cranes), Capilano suspension bridge, Grouse Mountain, and areas around the city. My favourite bits were Capilano suspension bridge and Grouse Mountain (where we saw Douglass Squirells.) The food was great and Halibut is now officially my favourite fish.

Then we went to Vancouver Island on a ferry we saw a few things on the way over, and visited the botanic gardens on the other side. We took a second short ferry from Brentwood Bay to Mill Bay where we saw the first and best view of a Steller’s Sea Lion before we headed north and birded around a marsh seeing some more good birds. The next day we drove to Tofino and stayed at “Bird and breakfast” where we saw Rufus Hummingbird that we had missed at the botanic gardens. The next day on the “Early Bird” trip we saw our first Black Bear, it was the first of eight! The next day, we went on a pelagic to the shelf, 50km out to sea! The day after that we went on a canoe tour and to Cleland Island were we saw Sea Otters! The next day we got a float plane over to nights inlet where the two highlights were Grizzly Bears and Orcas and we saw both! One of the Grizzly’s had two cubs both of which, (though one more than the other), had white chest markings.

Then in an RV we headed off to the Rockies we stopped off at various places on the way getting lots of new mammals and birds at the various campsites including Clark’s Nutcrackers as well as Yellow-pine Chipmunks, American Red Squirrel, and a Columbian Ground-squirrel all of which could be seen very closely and fed on peanuts. In the Rockies it was good fun staying at jasper and Banff national parks and many birds were seen as well as mammals including Hoary Marmots and a Grey Wolf!

The Badlands were good fun with lots of birds including Western Kingbirds, Western Meadowlark and Canvasback. We went on early morning drives to see mammals but all we had was road kill. However, we saw a Great Horned Owl that made up for it. We later went on to the Dinosaur Provincial Park where the scenery was unique and amazing! There I saw stuff including Mountain Cottontail and American White Pelican.

The holiday was good fun and overall I saw 170 species of  birds (plus two heard), with 132 of them new (as well as 10 quite different new subspecies.) I also saw 31 mammals (plus one heard – Coyote) including my 100th mammal: Beaver.

A complete list can be found here (I’ve crossed out the birds I missed.)

Here are some sketches I made…

      

Here are some photos (mostly that my dad took, although I took some of the Grizzlys)…