Vancouver Island – August ‘09 – Part Six

Boy it is taking forever to get this trip over with!  I’ll make a concerted effort to get us off of the west coast of the island today.

We packed up and got ready to leave, but as check out time was 11:00 am, took one last walk down to the beach…

headed to the rocks at the base of the campground again….the tide was out…

and there was the Black Oystercatcher again….

Since I don’t get to see Oystercatchers where I live, indulged in a few photos…

and there was ‘baby’…..

pretty soon the whole family was strutting off across the sand….

just a view of the expanse of sandy beach…..

and another view as we headed back to the campground.

had to toss in this picture of little shorebird feet around the base of this bull kelp….

a last look at some of those Semi-palmated Plovers.

We’d packed up and hit the road but decided to swing down and take a look at Wickaninish Beach.  This beach is still within Pacific Rim National Park, but at the southern end of the park.

the only birdlife to be seen were these gulls – California Gull’s I think, but won’t swear to that.  There were a lot of surfers at this beach so perhaps that explains the lack of shorebirds….

This gull is obviously different from the others, I think possibly a Western Gull…again, stand to be corrected.

One of the interesting features of this beach are the adjacent sand dunes….this view looks northwards and…

this view is looking southwards. 

there was some interesting vegetation growing in the dune area…..these are the seed heads of a plant called ‘Beach Carrot’..

here is what the plant looks like from a distance…

Here is another interesting looking plant….this one is called Sand Verbena….

Here is a close up of the Sand verbena flowers…those brown things are seed heads from that Beach Carrot.

just another view of the beach….

This is the same plant that the little shorebirds had been hiding behind back on Long Beach….

the ones on Long Beach had finished flowering….apparently this sort of succulent plant is called American Sea Rocket.

and my final photo of the west coast features some Indian Paint brush. 

We then started the trek back to the east coast of the island, stopping at Little Qualicum Falls Provincial Park for the night where I took no pictures……next stop will be Miracle Beach……