After steering round Triangle Island, we started to head south, ultimately reaching back to Port McNeill. Our two christened "chummers" commenced chumming; tossing fish parts over the sides and back of the boat. There were several Sooty Shearwaters in the area, so we wanted to bring them in, and possibly a Pink-footed, which we were still shockingly missing. Of course first, the food brought in a few inquisitive gulls, both Glaucous-winged and Herring.
Glaucous-winged Gull
Herring Gull
The Sooties did eventually come in though, and I snapped a shot of one as it approached abreast the vessel. The shot came out blurry because of, well, the rocking of the boat, but it turned out positive because the capture created a beautiful reflection below the bird!
Sooty Shearwater - happy accident shot
Here's a picture of Triangle Island on the right and a piece of the Scott Islands on the left, as seen from a fair distance :
Two distant islands
There was no shortage of birds out here too, as the amount of Rhinoceros Auklet did not wain from the trip to TrIs; there were plenty of them. Sooty Shears followed the boat on portside, but not one Pinky-foot showed up - too bad. An immature Bald Eagle swooped over which always a nice sight.
Suddenly, we saw a faraway V of birds off in the clouds. They got closer, closer, and they started vocalizing. By golly they were cackling! Yep, they were Cackling Geese! The flock of around 100 birds flew right over the boat, and I was too stunned to take a picture ( sorry ). What an unreal visual! 100 Cackling Geese, flying over a boat, in the middle of the sea. Neat. On a side note, I couldn't pick out any "Aleutian" Cackling Geese, a rare subspecies, which extremely rarely make it to British Columbia, but hey, a random flock of Cacklers over the ocean could have anything! Tundra Bean-Goose anyone?
Veering south-east, we spotted a tight band of SOSHs huddled together with a photobomber Common Murre :
Sans COMU
Avec photobomber Common Murre
A few minutes later, there was a patch of water which was bustling with activity. Common Murres, mooore Rhinos, Pelagic Cormorants, and some straggling Sooty Shearwaters were all in a small area. Time to chum again - there was a lot of action around. Immediately we noticed a fishing trawler attracting gulls... but no jaegers or skuas or terns or whatever. The fishing trawler gulls noticed us and quickly we had around 120 gulls swarming around our boat, feasting on the fish remains. Glaucous-winged, Herring, 1 Ring-billed, and countless hybridy-thingies gulls were counted. No pure Westerns alas, arrgghhh! Where's my lifer-bird? Well, here's a picture of the ruckus the gulls were causing. ( The pink bits are the fish, a.k.a. chum ).
Frenzy!
A curious young hybridy gull :
Dave, the random gull
There was no shortage of other avian life besides the omnipresent gulls either. The chum magnetized in Pelagic and Brandt's Cormorants, Rhinoceros Auklets, and even several striking breeding plumage Pacific Loons! ( Please excuse me, my camera missed the PALOs too. ) But I did successfully photograph the cormorants!
Cormorant heads, not to mention a hybrid gull and two Rhinoceros Auklets
After spending a great deal of time chumming here, we took off again.
The next half an hour or so was taken up soaking up the sun and seeing the last few Sooty Shearwaters of the trip trickling away in the distance. We could now see land; the top tip of Vancouver Island. Passing some of the islands previously passed on the way out to sea ( see Day 2 - Part 1 ), were being approached.
On a rocky outcropping on the edge of one of the island was a troop of Steller Sea-Lions which are overall big goldy-brownish lumps, charismatically positioned and behaving. A photo shoot ensues.
Above - The head honcho
Starting the plunge!
How can you not photograph them? They are one of a kind. How can you not love them?
Moving on, here's the long stretch of scenery I was forewarning. A virtual tour is what I call it...
We are now in island country. There are hundreds, I mean hundreds of islands in this chain, and every one is unique.
This one had a cavern :
... and an over-turned log :
This one had pretty orange moss on its rocks :
As you can see, there were two Harlequin Ducks swimming right beside this island :
This island bears quite a beautiful lighthouse :
And finally, at this spectacular one, we heard a Pacific Wren beaking out his tinkley, beautiful song from its solid, dense stand of trees up this rocky face :
Birds were few and far between in this stretch, but we weren't complaining. It was gorgeous out there in the hot, beating down sun!
I was intrigued and amazing at the rock and soil layers of many of the islands, as these pictures exhibit.
This one looks like one of those islands you see in the adventure movies where some guy gets shipwrecked on a desolate island...
Picturesque inlets and coves were everywhere :
At least there were *some* birds around; a party of 9 Western Grebes sallied the waters, lone Bald Eagles sat on knolls on the edge of some of the islands, and a few Mew Gulls flew by.
The sun was starting to creep down to horizon, and it was still be courteous to us with its warmth and light. As it was bound to happen, birding picked up as we got close to "real" land. This stone was filled with cormorants perching on it. All three sp were picked out ( DC, P, and B ).
Cormorant Island
Now no blog post of coastal Vancouver Island could be complete without a picture of beacon in the middle of a bay :
Beacon
The Naiad Explorer ( our boat ) was starting to near Port Hardy, our first drop-off place before motoring down to Port McNeill to dock. An amusing sight was this as we moved toward the dock :
Cormorant salesmen
At the Port Hardy port, we said goodbye to the birders who got on the boat there, and as a farewell gesture, a Turkey Vulture surfed by overhead.
Now, my quest for a pure Western Gull did not stop there; I snapped a picture of this gull right before ducking into the Port Hardy bay :
What do you think? Pure Western? I sadly think not, I can see hints of Glaucous-winged descent...
Thirty minutes later, our boat pulled into the Port McNeill dock, gleefully greeted by a horde of Western Sandpipers on the boat dock.
Western Tire Sandpipers 'a la boat dock'
Western Sandpipers
Finally, 8 1/2 hours after we embarked, the captain, Bill Mackay powered down the boat and gentle nudged it into its berth.
It was time to celebrate! We had beaten a 1/7 odds of making it out to Triangle Island, reached it successfully, and came back scot-free! Also, we observed over 50 species of bird and 5 species of mammal!
I shook Bill and his wife Donna's hand, as well as Liron, who organized the trip, and then disembarked. I was still in bird find-mode though as usual, so I scanned the mud flat for peeps. Sure enough, the flock of Westerns who were on the docks flew in and offered a photo opportunity.
Western Sandpipers prodding the mud for invertebrates
Foraging for food
Settling down after briskly lifting off
Dunlin were mixed in too :
Copycats
NW Crows were on the shore too, making sure the sandpipers don't eat all the food.
The always entertaining and loveable Northwestern Crow
Surprisingly, a Savannah Sparrow was feeding on the some seaweed on the opposite side of the flats, and he/she was cooperative.
After saying my final goodbyes to the pelagic birders who I had 'shipped' with for the whole day, I headed back to the cottage where I was ready for a good night's sleep. Tomorrow's a big birding day, too!
P.S. A bonus photo - Orange-crowned Warbler on my way to the cottage :
Orange-crowned Warbler
Day 3 - Coming up!
Logan
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