Our first walk today took us into some “Twilight-esque” forest. Totally different plants than we have seen before and an almost prehistoric feel to the undergrowth. Very little sounds apart from the crashing waves on one side and the traffic noise on the other, but in the middle everything feels muted.
I have never seen lily of the valley outside of a garden so that was interesting… I thought they were hostas to start with.
I didn’t see any birds in the forest but we did hear some. The rest of the family got sick of me stopping and shushing them.
At the end of the boardwalk, we popped out onto Combers Beach – no one surfing on this one so presumably rubbish waves or too dangerous, it wasn’t clear which. We almost immediately got flown over by a bald eagle who tried to catch something and failed and was totally unmoved by the helicopter. We also saw a flock of what I think were sandpipers scurrying along next to the water.
Our next walk was on boardwalks again, this time called a rainforest. I am not sure I could spot the different in the flora or fauna but it was a nice walk. The weird thing was the noise the many ravens were making. Merlin was convinced it was ravens but it was very odd. They sounded like they were imitating other birds. I think they can be trained to something close to speech so I presume it is possible but it sounded very strange. One sounded like bubbles popping!
A walk into town meant we glimpsed a raccoon ( spotted by Mila obviously!) but it dashed off too fast for a photo.
Our last trip of the day was to Meares Island to do a tall trees hike. We needed to get a water taxi over to the island which was good fun and we got a fleeting glimpse of a sea otter before it dove into the water and hid.
The plants were similar although the trees were bigger as the island had never been logged:
The birds were much the same too with the red crossbills apparently happy to eat Douglas fir cones as well.
We saw the Stellars Jay and a few more not Al sounding ravens but the little birds were high, quiet and well hidden – when the canopy is 40m above you, they are going to be tricky to spot!
There was evidence of some kind of rodent but we didn’t see any. We did see the famous banana slug which was disgusting and massive. Ooh and a load of teeny crabs on the shoreline of the island.
Finally we were treated to some exhibitionist behaviour from Diego during supper and afterwards as he publicly caught, tore apart and swallowed fish right in front of the marina. The waiter said he was there regularly and didn’t seem impressed but we were!