Vancouver Island

Barbara Begg had fixed us up with a young local birder, Jeremy Gatten.  The object of our searches today would be Sooty Grouse, a bird we've heard this year but not seen.  Since it would be a lifer for John, we hoped to see it to add it to his life list.  We met Jeremy early this morning in the Victoria Butterfly Gardens parking lot.  From there we went to Koksilah River Provincial Park where we drove logging roads looking for Sooty Grouse and avoiding logging trucks (web photo).  Mercifully, there were no encounters with those big rigs.  When the logging roads were closed, we walked them.  We did see some nice birds but no grouse.  Next we tried hiking up Mt. Wells where a grouse had been heard earlier this year.  It was a nice hike, but no grouse.  We had lunch at Mom's Cafe in Sooke, a folksy nook indeed.  Then we drove west to some logging tracks Jeremy knew.  Lots of Steller's Jays, American Robins, Varied Thrushes, and Red-shafted Flickers, but no grouse.  After many kms of these sometimes rough roads, we headed back to town where we dropped Jeremy off at his place and we returned to the motel.  Tomorrow we fly to Alaska.