Wildlife

I mentioned in yesterday's post that Active Pass is a good place to see wildlife of various kinds. Above is an unremarkable photo of a species of seabird that is new to me though they are common on this coast. The trio above are Pigeon Guillemot (Cepphus columba), a kind of diving bird. The pair on the right are as yet unidentified....

Orca (Orcinus orca)

Part of the ferry route from Victoria to Vancouver goes through a narrow pass between two of the Gulf Islands. It's called Active Pass and is a good place to see some of the local wildlife such as seals and various seabirds. And if you're lucky, you may see some of the local Orca or Killer Whales (Orcinus orca) like I did on my recent trip. There were about a dozen in this pod though there were seldom more than three or four visible on the surface at any one time. In the photo below you can see one of them is breaching and spouting while a whale-watching boat follows at a discreet distance.

Island Living

Although Victoria is located on an island (Vancouver Island) I never really have the sense of "island living" except when I need to go somewhere. The first part of the trip is almost always a ride on a ferry to get to the mainland. That sense of island living is mostly absent because of the size of Vancouver Island. It's a big island - just over 12,000 square miles or 31,000 square kilometers - larger in area than some 50 of the world's smaller countries. It's just a little larger than Belgium, for example. It's about 285 miles (460 kilometers long) and averages about 50 miles (80 kilometers) wide. Much of it is wilderness - about half of the population of 800,000 live in Victoria, the rest in a half-dozen small towns scattered around the southern coastline. All of which may serve as a preamble to noting that I traveled to the mainland this last weekend and will be sharing some of what I saw over the next few days.

Quatuor Stomp

Yesterday while I played in the dirt (see previous post) my daughter and her friends went downtown to see some of the buskers performing at the 2014 Buskers Festival. Equipped with the camera she was entrusted to capture some of the action and did she ever! Quantuor Stomp, pictured here really looked like they gave a high flying performance. - Fern

In The Garden

Downtown is bustling with activities and events but I have to admit, my backyard is where I want to be, doing nothing but watching things grow. - Fern