Birding Vancouver and Vancouver Island

Land of Loons and Loggers

Daily Log

Species List

Home of Bavarianbirds.de

Introduction:

From September 14th til September 28th 1999 we spent our holidays in British Columbia, Canada and especially Vancouver Island. Altogether we had very good weather and I was able to do some birding, although Brigitte is not so much into birds. We spent most of the time on Vancouver Island trying to get an impression of the wildlife there in September.
Vancouver Island is on the same latitude as Bavaria, but the climate seems to be much more rough than in Germany. There were still snow patches from the last winter down to an altitude of about 1000 m. Compared to Europe bird migration especially of waders seemed to be already over, there were fewer shorebirds than I expected.
Bird identification was another problem for us, most of the birds were in eclipse plumage and so it was hard to tell all the different sparrows apart and also the ducks, gulls and some of the passerines were not easy. But it is always hard to cope with bird identification in a foreign country. Nevertheless we managed to identify more than 130 different bird species and also some of the mammals we saw.
I would like to say thank you especially to Hank Vanderpol (whom we accompanied on an early morning trip on the 16th) and Bryan Gates from Victoria, who had a look at some of our photos. Thank you also to Peter H. Barthel, Colin Bartlett, Christopher Schmidt, and all the others who helped preparing this trip by providing books or good tips.

What we did, our daily log

What we saw, the species list

Links and Literature

Useful bird links to the area:

Books (some others like "Birder's Guide to Vancouver Island" written by Keith Taylor were not available):

National Geographic, Field Guide to the Birds of North America, 3rd Ed., Washington 1999.
R. Wayne Campbell et al., Birds of British Columbia Vol. I-III, Royal British Columbia Museum 1990-1997.
Joy & Cam Finlay, From Alpine to Ocean, A British Columbia Nature Guide, Lone Pine Publishing, Edmonton 1992.
Kim Goldberg, Where to See Wildlife on Vancouver Island, Harbour Publishing, Madeira Park and Vancouver 1997.

Maps:

ITM, Vancouver Island 1:400,000, 3. Ed., Vancouver.
Rand McNally, Nanaimo, Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast, (City Maps, Regional Map).

Brochures:

Brochures of most of the wildlife places we visited are available at the tourist informations. These leaflets include detailed maps, descriptions of hiking trails, information on wildlife etc.. They are a very good source.

Comments, Remarks, Questions, Postcards to the Author:

Dr. Stefan Tewinkel
Brigitte Andrew
Riegerweg 9
D-82024 Taufkirchen
Germany
tewinkel@gmx.de