by Keith and Heather Nicol
Heather walking one of the broad sandy beaches in the area |
On Friday, April
29th we headed to Tofino to check out their 19th annual weekend
shorebird festival. My brother, Bruce and his wife , Mary Ellen had been to the festival a few years earlier
and suggested that we meet them in Tofino this year. We arrived in bright
sunshine and the good weather lasted all weekend. We are new to birding so
thought this might be a good way to learn about shorebirds. The Raincoast
Education Society puts on the event and many of the events were free or had a
minimal cost. There were boat tours, guided bird walks, indoor presentations
and even a birding excursion by kayak that we planned on joining on Sunday, May
1. On Friday night we listened to a talk
by Dr. Mark Drever from the Canadian Wildlife Service who spoke about the
northward shorebird migration in B.C. He said that the Tofino area is noteworthy
since it has such a diversity of habitats, from sandy beaches to rocky
headlands as well as extensive mud flats. In past years close to 30 species of
shorebirds have been seen during the spring migration.
Jess Findlay (2nd from left) led an informative bird photo workshop on Cox Bay |
On Saturday morning
we took in a very good bird photography workshop with Jess Findlay. He led a
very informative session with a 45 minute indoor talk followed by an outdoor
excursion on a Cox Bay. Jess leads photography workshops for a living and we
were fortunate to be able to have him show us how to approach birds in the
field to have the best chance of photographing them. There weren’t many birds
on the beach that day likely because of the large number of people out walking
the beach and surfing, but he did find a small flock of semipalmated plovers
with a couple of western sandpipers in the mix. “Stay low and slowly approach
the birds making sure that you don’t disturb them” he told us. He had many
other practical tips for getting better bird images and we really enjoyed his
presentation.
We saw semipalmated plovers feeding in the wet sand |
In the afternoon we
did a shorebird identification talk with Dr. Barbara Beasley and her talk was
aimed mainly for the beginner which we appreciated. “Try to learn the shape and
size of the various birds and that will help give you an idea of what you are
looking at. For instance, plovers are usually round and curvy with short bills
where as whimbrels and the long billed curlew are large and have long beaks.”
After her talk we headed down to the mudflats to try to see some of the birds
she had just described. Unfortunately the tide was quite far out and there were
not any birds to be seen! As the tide rose it began to push the birds toward
the shore and we were eventually treated to some whimbrels as well as a few
other sandpipers. Thanks to the Rainforest
Educational Society (http://raincoasteducation.org/) for organizing
this event and they offer a variety of other educational courses and other
programmes. For a review of what we saw on our "Birding by Kayak" tour on Sunday, May 1 click http://keithnicol.blogspot.ca/2016/05/birding-at-tofino-shorebird-festival.html
We saw several whimbrels on the mud flats (note the long bill) |
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