September: "At This Time"

In the September calm waters and warm sun, the seals haul out along the rocks and reefs of Trial Island. The seals are watchful as they slip off their rocks to curiously peer at the passing boat.


Mothers usually alert their young, but this baby seal was fast asleep and only woke up when I touched his nose.

This worried mother leads her pup to safety

and assures it with a kiss.

A young Pigeon Guillemot, foraging close to shore, is dressed for winter in its cryptic black and white plumage.


Landing on Trial Island amid the Fucus. A feather presents the promise of birds. 

Along the shoreline an unlikely somber figure eyes my approach. Another fall migration is underway the raptors follow the west coast on their migration south. Victoria is on this path and some of the soaring birds like this Turkey Vulture need to rest before crossing the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

I am lured out to sea by the raucous calls of the Common Murres that have led their chicks into the strait to feed on juvenile herring and sandlance. The chick in winter plumage is following its parent which is for a short time, still in breeding plumage.

The parent and chick communicate with unique calls that allow the pair to find each other once a fish is caught.
 

Parent and young get separated while diving for food. When he surfaces, the father with a fish in his bill calls loudly until the chick comes to take his reward.

What appears as a passing flight of tiny shorebirds swirls and lands on the water. These can only be phalaropes sometimes referred to as "shorebirds that have gone to sea". Their habitats are the frontal zones and tide lines that bring tiny invertebrates to the surface and concentrate them within easy reach of their forcep bills.

Bobbing their slender heads like chickens, the Red-necked Phalaropes pick and peck at the surface devouring tiny invertebrates.

Between Chatham and Discovery Islands tiny Least Sandpipers (21g) flush from the mud flats where they were picking and probing for lunch.

Big-eyed Semipalmated Plovers mix with the sandpipers looking for marine worms and other invertebrates. Semipalmated refers to the partial webbing between their toes.


A Surfbird in winter plumage stands on the reef where it forages for invertebrates like acorn barnacles which it pulls off the rock and swallows whole, shell and all. A good identification feature is the orange at the base of the lower mandible.

The mud flats are bordered by rich mats of colourful Sea Asparagus (Seablite, Salicornia virginica) a tasty edible with bright stems of showy red, green and yellow.

Just above the beach I find the "Raven's Canoe". The black pods of the Giant Vetch were given this name by the Haida because of their resemblance to a native canoe. Nearby is a summer village of the Coast Salish.

Nearby the large bright flowers of the Puget Sound Gumweed (Grindelia integrifolia). They have a sticky secretion that coats the green buds and the cup that hold the flowers. They are a consistent yellow display along the coastal beaches with a prolonged blooming season from May to October.

The fruit of the Bitter Cherry (Prunus emarginata) is ripe but quite inedibly bitter.

A better choice to eat are the Himalayan Blackberries (Rubus discolor) gathering sweetness from the last of the summer's sun.

The berries of the forest are ripe. The white Snowberries show brightly against the rich green leaves. Aboriginal people considered this berry poisonous and can called them "corpse berries". 

It is often silent now high on a dry ridge in the Sooke Hills. Here the  sun is still relentless before the fall rains, its heat lifting a sweet arid fragrance of berries and pine. Many of the migrants have left, I hear the distant calls of the raven, jays, nuthatches, chickadees and juncos. Laying flat in protected hollows are dense mats of Kinnikinnick, these will provide food into the winter for bears and grouse.

Some trees are adorned with lichens, that strange union of algae and fungi. This symbiotic relationship allows the lichen to endure harsh environments. The algal component (green) providing carbohydrates derived from photosynthesis while the fungal component provides structural support and nutrients.

Back into the Sooke Hills, heavier nighttime dew and September rains are bringing the mushrooms up.

The exotic and beautiful Amanita Muscaria emerges from the soil covered in a white universal veil looking somewhat like an egg. As the fingi expands, the veil is broken leaving its remnants as white spots against the red of the cap.

Crabapple Lake is adorned with colourful water lilies (Nymphaea odorata), an introduced species, it shows bright white to pink flowers from July into late September.

August: "At This Time"

August is the time of ripening. The fruit of the Oregon Grape (Mahonia nervosa) are a splash of colour among the rich green flora of the Douglas-fir Forest.

The meadows are fringed with Indian Plum (Oemleria cerasiformis), their leaves turning green, yellow and gold. The plums hang in purple bunches.

In the damp bottom of a dry pond on Chatham Island, Pacific Treefrogs (Hyla regilla) sunbathe on leaves.

The flowers of summer paint the forest green with rich daubs of colour. The chalky white berries of the Common Snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus) will soon form from these delicately swollen August flowers.


Deep in the forest of the Sooke Hills, a dry pond hosts the brialliant blue of the King Gentian (Gentiana sceptrum).

Their breeding done, Mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) return to the city parks. The males are not absent, but are inconspicuous in their "eclipse plumage" that resembles the females'. They are betrayed by their bill colour which remains evenly yellow while the females' bill is orange with a dark centre.

Along the rocky reefs seal mothers haul out with their pups to bath in the warm sun.

Rhinoceros Auklets (Cerorhinca moncerata) nest on the American side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. They come into Canadian waters to feed on Pacific Sandlance. Like their close relatives, the puffins, these auklets sequentially catch sandlance until they have a billload. They then wait until dark before flying back home to feed their young who are waiting in their nesting burrow.

The male Common Murre (Uria aalge) cares for his young fledgling. In late July and August they lead the chick into the Georgia Strait to feed off the shores of Vancouver Island. The female is off on the ocean taking a rest from parenting and replenishing her energetic stores.

The Heermann's Gull (Larus heermanni) nests on the west coast of Mexico and arrive in Victoria after their breeding season has ended. Their generally darker plumage and bright orange bills make them conspicuous among our native gulls.

The shorebirds are now migrating along the coast of Vancouver Island. Along the Oak Bay waterfront on this day were Western Sandpipers, Semipalmated Sandpipers, Least Sandpipers, Greater Yellowlegs, Black Oystercatchers, Black-Bellied Plovers, and Killdeer.

This Short-billed Dowitcher (Limnodromus griseus) can not be differentiated from its long-billed relative by bill length, since there is considerable overlap. This bird however showed a "light banded" tail in flight while a Long-billed Dowitcher shows a dark one. This one also shows rufous-buff edges and bars on its tertials.

This Willet (Catoptrophorus semipalmatus) was foraging along the shoreline of Mary Tod Island near the Oak Bay Marina.