by Keith and Heather Nicol
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| Marbled Murrelets nest in old growth forests |
On Saturday May 14
we had the good fortune to go sea kayaking with an old friend Alan Burger, who
is also an avid birder. We launched our kayaks at the boat launch at Point
Holmes near Comox and headed toward Cape Lazo. We hadn’t paddled too far before
we began to see some small groupings of Marbled Murrelets which it turned out
Alan had done lots of research on when he moved to Bamfield from Corner Brook,
Newfoundland. We knew Alan from Corner Brook but had not seen him for over 15
years.
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| Alan and Heather off of Cape Lazo |
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| Pacific Loons breed on freshwater tundra lakes |
Then out further
Alan spotted a large grouping of other birds and it turned out to be a surprisingly
big grouping of Pacific Loons with a few Common Loons in the mix. From there we
paddled around into Kye Bay where we saw some large rafts of scoters. We hadn’t
seen many of these birds for several weeks so were surprised to see them back in
this area. We saw all 3 types of scoters (White winged, Surf and Black Scoters)
but most of them seemed to be Surf Scoters who make an interesting whistling
sound when they take to the wing. We told Alan we hadn’t seen so many birds in
this Cape Lazo-Kye Bay for quite a while so he was quite lucky. And that is one
of the nice aspects of sea kayaking along the B.C. coast-you never know what
you might see and it changes by the day.
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| Surf Scoters make a whistling song with their wings when they fly |
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