Wet Wet Wet

Today, Martin and I went walking in the woods.

We started at the lighthouse again and did the circuit, bumping into Mark Newell there. We didn't see an awful lot - nearly all the migrant birds from the previous two days had cleared out, and the bushes around the light were pretty quiet. There was still quite a bit of wildfowl passage offshore - mainly surf scoters (and mostly drakes as well). We did, however, see a greylag goose fly over. Still not sure if this was a genuine vagrant and if we should have initiated a rare bird alert.

After a hearty breakfast at a nearby breakfast joint, and we checked out, we went for a walk in a different bit of coastal woodland. We didn't see much here, and the varied thrush I wanted to see eluded me once again. We did manage a brown treecreeper which was new for the trip. Perhaps the best thing I saw (Martin missed this) was when we first arrived at a viewpoint. I raised my binoculars to a spot offshore, and instead of seeing grey sea and a few waves, I got a face full of humpback whale. It had clearly done a lunge feed and launched half of its body clear of the water. So what I could see was the upper half of the underside of its body (all those ridges), part of its pectoral fins and water surging from the side of its huge mouth. It surfaced again and lofted its tail fluke into the air. Then we didn't see it again until much further offshore. WOW!!!!!

We walked for ages trying to see a varied thrush. But it started to rain, and didn't stop all day, so we got pretty wet and dis-spirited. We drove much of the way back to Victoria, stopping at potential places for varied thrush. All of these with no luck. We found an OK motel in Duncan and had a not very interesting meal at a family diner.

Will I go through my entire journey in Canada without seeing a single lifer?