Do bears shit in the woods?

We get up early and travel back to Amphitrite Point for more birding. Except it is foggy with limited visibility. We see a few additional species, including Macgillivary's and Wilson's warblers. We bump into Stefan Garthe and Philip Schwemmer who were both at the conference. They say they've seen a varied thrush, which is high on my hit list. How very dare they!

Steller's Jay

No luck with the varied thrush, so we continue on our way and visit some interesting boggy area and some virgin rain forest. The latter site seemed to reek of decay. The boardwalk weaved a way through the permanently wet forest, among rotting trees and talls stands of cypress, hemlock and what looks like leylandii. We bump into the German contingent again at each of these sites.

In the Pacific Rim virgin rainforest

We continue up to Tofino where there are mud flats. The town is very commercial, aimed at tourists. We see Stefan and Phillip there again! There is a small viewing platform overlooking the mudflats. We bump into Shane Wolseley from Northern Ireland (he is organising the BTO Atlas there). There are a few distant waders there - most likely Western sandpipers, but who knows at that range. A young bald eagle flies into a tree and makes quite a racket. We don't see much in the way of shorebirds.

Martin overlooking the Tofino mud flats

Our last port of call is to the Thornton Creek salmon hatchery, where they have been trying to augment the local salmon stocks. Its a drive along a rough track, but has a reputation for being a good place to watch black bears, when the salmon start to run.

When we arrive, there is a black bear in the river bed. It spots us and slowly ambles off up the bank and disappears into the vegetation. I walked along the boardwalk and onto a narrow bridge over the river to take a photo of the waterfall. Unbeknown to me, another black bear is ambling down the bank, and I see it just 20m away walking toward me and the bridge. I retreat back onto the boardwalk, facing it, and let it do its thing. This bear clearly is used to humans. It spends its time plonking its bum into the stream (is this what bears do when they want to go to the toilet, but are too shy to do it in the open? In fact it is panting, and seems to be using the river to cool off. We get amazing looks at this bear - just us and nobody else. It finally climbs up onto the same side of the river bank as us, onto the boardwalk and ambles away. Truly amazing.

Nice cascade, but what else is there to look out for?

Just as we are about to depart, the Germans arrive, and we grip them off with our bear photos.

In the evening, after an average Chinese meal, we bump into Mark Newell from CEH and Matt Parsons. They are teamed up for their travelling around this part of Vancouver Island.