Wednesday, 18 August 2010

Grizzlies

Ready to go! Today was expected to be much more straight forward with a journey to see Grizzly Bear within Knights Inlet. The journey lasted about an hour, and although they’d only ever not been seen once on a trip in August, when we arrived there were none! Eventually we found some however, getting four good sightings: A single female; two siblings (aged at about four years); a mother and two cubs (one of which had an extremely white collar); a single large female.

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The wind picked up for our journey home, an I was surprised to see a good number of Fork-tailed Petrels so far “inland”. Amongst them we got good views of a pale-rumped Leach’s Petrel. Other birds noted were Rhinoceros Aucklets, Marbled Murrelets, and our first of both Bonaparte’s Gulls (four in total) and Purple Martin (a single bird from the lodge at dusk.)

Plane to Campbell River We then took our float-plane journey back to Campbell River. Again, I sat with the pilot, this time in a de Havilland Turbo Otter. We then drove to our hotel where we enjoyed a dip in the pool before watching a glorious sunset over the channel whilst having a beer or two on the balcony.

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