Nature lovers should check out “A Year on the Wild Side”

By Keith and Heather Nicol

    Broiny Penn has written and illustrated a very readable book on how nature unfolds through the

Nature lovers will love this book

seasons in and around Vancouver Island. The book is broken down by month and each month has anywhere from 5 to 10 entries which detail some aspect of this region’s birds, animals and vegetation that is significant. But Broiny Penn doesn’t write in a clinical “bird book” type prose but rather as an offbeat story telling adventure. Along the way you learn about garter snakes, woodpeckers, sea lions, and arbutus trees. Many of her stories have humorous sensual overtones as the titles of some entries suggest- “Sex, Sweat and Salamanders”, “Pacific wrens and the food of love”  and “Barnacles and the battle of the sexes”.  

      Another strong point of the book is the Briony’s colourful full page illustrations which accompany each 3-4 page section. This is a book that you can pick up at any time and read a section or two. For instance, we liked reading a July entry about the moon snail and their elaborate egg casing.  We happened to read about them just before a recent kayak trip to Tree Island near Courtenay where we saw several fine examples of their egg casings on an exceptionally low tide.  We thought some of the most useful sections dealt with topics like various ferns, winter shorebirds, berries and how to tell one type from another.  There is even a section on the plate tectonics that formed Vancouver Island complete with a sketch of Wrangellia colliding with the North American plate roughly 100,000,000 years ago to form Vancouver Island and the adjacent land. If you want to know about the Vancouver Island’s varied and amazing animal and plant life then this book is for you. We fully recommend it either for yourself or as a gift. “A Year on the Wild Side” is published by Touchwood Editions. For more information see:  https://www.touchwoodeditions.com/.

We saw moon snail egg casings on a recent kayak trip to Tree Island near Comox

Learn about Orca and other whales that populate the Salish Sea

Coastal Walking Trails in the Comox Valley- Williams Beach

by Keith and Heather Nicol

    With our daughter Kristie (who loves beach walking) visiting from Vancouver, we were looking for a beach location that we hadn’t walked before.  So we scoured the map for some places that were close to Courtenay that we hadn’t visited. We used the Back Roads Map Book for Vancouver Island as our guide and settled on checking out Williams Beach which is about 16 km north from our house in Courtenay. The beach access is at the end of Williams Beach Road but for those handy with a GPS the parking lot coordinates are 49 50.136 N and 125 03.602 W and there is parking for about 6-8 cars. The parking lot is adjacent to Alders Beach Resort and the sandy beach that is in front of their location and which stretches south for over a 1km is well worth checking out. 

Kristie checks out some oyster shells

 This location is not as nearly as well known as nearby Miracle Beach so if you don’t like crowds this is your spot. We were there at a tide of between 2 and 2 .5 meters which was perfect for walking on the sandy stretch of beach since the sand is sandwiched between cobbles and gravels at higher tides and lower tides.  Certainly lower tides would be fine for walking on the sand but access to the water would be over cobbles/gravels so check the tides before you head out if you goal is trekking over a broad sandy beach.  For other many other coastal walks in the Comox Valley to try simply put Coastal Walks in the search bar at the left hand top of this blog post . Also if you want a great map source for beaches, trails, back roads etc.  check out the Back Roads publishing (https://www.backroadmapbooks.com/) . Happy exploring. 

There is a huge expanse of sand at Williams Beach (at the right tide)

Celebrating the Summer Solstice at Innisfree Farm in Royston

By Keith and Heather Nicol

      It is always nice to mark important times of the year and since both of us are interested in the natural world - the equinoxes and solstices are dates that were we usually celebrate in some fashion.   We had attended their event last year and enjoyed it so thought it would be a good way to bring in the start of summer and the longest day of the year (in the northern hemisphere). 

Recently for the summer solstice (June 21) we headed out to Innisfree Farm in Royston to take in their event this year.

Heather walking the labyrith

    Innisfree Farm has over 200 species of food and medicinal plants spread over 7 acres and their tag line is “growing wellness”.  For this solstice event they had a variety of delicious finger foods, tours of the various gardens and an opportunity to walk their labyrinth of oyster shells.  A real bonus was the Celtic harpist who played in the shade of a tree next to the food tables. We ran into friends we hadn’t seen in a few weeks so had a bite to eat at a table that was dappled in sunlight near in the harpist. Idyllic!

Tables were laden with finger foods many of which were produced with ingrediants from the farm

   Innisfree Farm is an internationally registered Botanic Garden and learning centre and recently they have opened a small restaurant called the Green Dream Cafe. It is open Fridays and Saturdays from June 22-Sept 7 from 9 am to 4 pm and offers a pleasant outdoor setting for alfresco breakfast and vegetarian lunches with herbal teas and organic coffees. This is an ideal time to come out and see the gardens and enjoy a meal produced from the nearby gardens at Innisfree. For more information see: https://www.innisfreefarm.ca/ 

Chanchal Cabrena led a large group on 2 tours of the gardens

Sea Kayaking to Tree Island makes for an ideal 1/2 day trip

 by Keith and Heather Nicol

Heather enroute to Tree Island

Tree Island is located off the northern tip of Denman Island and makes a perfect half day paddle (or longer if you plan to explore the island or want to linger). We do the trip on an annual basis and usually launch at the Union Bay Boat launch.  This makes it easy to launch your kayak and there is a large car park for your vehicle (GPS coordinates are:  10 U 0363691 E 5494107 N). Be sure to drop your launch fee money in the box. From here you can’t quite see Tree Island but as soon as you take a few paddle strokes out of the harbour it looms 4.4 km in the distance. Since it is an open water crossing you want to factor in the weather and wave conditions and be competent at doing a self rescue if you run into trouble. 

A moon snail egg casing is in the foreground

On Sunday, June 16 the wind forecast was for light NE winds which made for a very pleasant trip to Tree Island since the breeze was in our face keeping us cool. Although temperatures were in the low 20’s C   the following wind made it quite warm on the return trip. Be sure to bring water! We saw very little wild life in terms of birds or seals but we had fine views of the snow capped mountains of the BC mainland in the distance as we paddled toward the island.  When we arrived at Tree Island due to the very low tide we had to paddle to the Denman Island end of the island to have a sandy beach to land on.  And it being Father’s Day there were lots of other boats enjoying a lunch or snack on the island.  We counted 5 power and sailboats pulled up while we had our lunch. We also saw lots of sand dollars and some interesting moon snail egg casings which looked like pottery vases. They were exposed due to the very low tide. We recommend this trip because of the sandy beach and scenery but do keep an eye to the weather.  Allow about 1 hour each way for paddling depending on wind and wave conditions.

Several other boats were also at Tree Island on Sunday

Mountain biking in Bear Creek Nature Park near Courtenay, BC

By Keith and Heather Nicol

   We are always on the look out for easy mountain bike trails through the woods and especially along the water if we can find them.  In the Courtenay area we have previously written about cycling along Puntledge River which has a nice trail which follows the Puntledge River from Comox Lake to Nymph Falls (https://keithnicol.blogspot.com/2018/06/mountain-biking-around-puntledge-river.html) .  The biggest river just to the north of us is the Oyster River and it has some nice trails that we just discovered at Bear Creek Nature Park.

At the trailhead

    This park is not well known but offers hikers, bikers, and horseback riders some fine trails which are in part along the Oyster River. We headed there to explore these trails on Saturday, June 15 and found the parking lot empty around 11:00 am (coordinates are 49 51.625 N and 125 09.760 W) .  The park is located near Black Creek on Macaulay Road and watch carefully for the pull in sign since we drove right past it on the first go around.  There is a gate which is easy to walk around and a welcome sign that introduces you to the park. The park isn’t huge at 62.5 hectares but has tons of short trails that are easy riding for the most part by anyone on a mountain bike. 

Cycling along the Oyster River was very scenic

  The main road is gravel as are many of the side roads but lots of the short connecting trails are grassy. The only trails that we found abit too rough for a hard tail bike were the Riverside trail, the River Bench Trail and the Fish Channel Trail. These trails are mostly fine but have some rooty steep sections that we walked. Most of the grassy trails have names like Coho, Steelhead etc and are typically 200-400 meters long. There is a great trail map that you can pick up at the start and numerous sign posts along the way so you can easily stay found.  We had lunch at a shady picnic table overlooking the Oyster river which was idyllic. GPS coordinates for this perfect spot are 49 52.281 N 125 10.210 W.  Overall we cycled about 8.5 km and it took us about 90 minutes with stops for pictures and lunch. We also checked out the Upper bench loop which adds another 1.2 km.  Thanks to the Oyster River Enhancement Society for their role in maintaining trails and you can get more information about the society at:  https://oysterriverenhancement.org/   There is much information about salmon enhancement and what happens related to improving salmon stocks at various places in the park. For more information on the park see: https://www.comoxvalleyrd.ca/parks-recreation/comox-valley-parks-trails/bear-creek-nature-park  . Overall we saw just one family walking on the trails and 2 people on horse back and given that this was a sunny Saturday my guess is that this park is not overrun by people.  The only downside is the steep climb up the hill on the way back to the parking lot.

There are lots of signs at trail intersections - note the grassy trail on the left