Happy New Year from Galiano!
We spent New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day on Galiano. It was a short trip, and it mostly rained the whole time. But we got to relax a bit, played with our new toy, got some work done and had a few great wildlife sightings. There’s never a dull visit!
We headed over on the morning ferry on the 30th, with a retur planned just a couple of days later, on New Year’s Day. We didn’t have a lot of time and the weather wasn’t looking all that great. Chris and Ali were kind enough to let us stay at their place, so we were able to stay up at the property for the full time. It was nice not to leave.
The weather wasn’t great, but the ferry ride over was uneventful. Until we were almost pulling into Sturdies Bay, when the captain came over the radio to let us know we had orcas! There were a lot of them, and they were right near the ferry. So great to see them, and it continued our streak of whale sightings - 7 trips and counting! Not all orcas, but this was a great start to the trip.
After disembarking, we made our usual stop at the bakery to pick up some lunch. The we head up island to the property. The weather held for us for the first part of day, and so we were able to enjoy the afternoon and hang about outside. For Christmas (and with some 50/50 winnings) I had bought Justine and I a small drone to play with. We’d wanted one for a while, but never enough to spend the money. Since the money came to us, it was an easy purchase!
Our new toy - the DJI Mavic Mini! So cool, and so tiny!
And in flight!
Since the weather was holding out, so we spent an hour or so learning how to fly the drone. It’s actually pretty easy - no crashes! It’s got some cool auto modes as well, which were kind of fun to play with. Sadly the weather turned on us and the rain came in so we had to stop.
The rest of the afternoon and evening were pretty relaxed. Since it was raining, we stayed inside, played cards and some games, had a drink or two and generally relaxed. It was a good start to our last few days of vacation.
New Year’s Eve, the weather remained quite poor. It was raining pretty heavily, so our activities were a bit limited. We installed and built some of our Christmas gifts and did some general puttering around in the shed organizing and such. It wasn’t super productive, but it was a fun, relaxed day.
As the day progressed, the weather got a bit better and the rain finally stopped. That gave me the chance to pull out the BBQ and make us a nice New Year’s Eve dinner. It turned out nicely, and we had a nice start to the evening.
Happy New Year!
The night completely cleared up and we had a brilliant evening under the stars. Which meant we needed a fire, and so I lit one and we sat out enjoying the night and a few glasses of wine.
New Year’s Day, while technically our shortest day, ended up being our busiest and most action-packed day. Fortunately the weather behaved for most of it. Our New Year’s Eve wasn’t that late, and so we were up at a reasonable time. Since the weather was good, we got a bit of work done in the morning. We started a small fire to burn some broome, and I got the chainsaw going to work on downed logs. I’m creating a bit of a pile from last year’s storm damage that needs to be turned into firewood. Justine worked on broome eradication.
While we were working, we had a few good humpback sightings as well. Through the binoculars, but they were putting on quite a show - lots of breaching!
When we had stopped at the market on the way up, we had noticed that the Galiano Conservancy Association was hosting a Nature Walk in the afternoon, so we planned to attend that. And with a 5:45 ferry, our day was pretty busy.
We did want to make a trip down to the beach to see what was going on, so we cut our work day short and headed to the beach around 11:00. As we got to the water, it was… noisy. And we were greeted with a very odd sight - a raft of sea lions!
A raft of sea lions, resting in the open water. But also making quite a noise!
Apparently they raise their flippers like that to regular their body temperature. It was quite the sight to behold. But we were almost immediately distracted by a pair of river otters that went swimming by, just a few meters from shore.
We’ve seen river otters at this sport pretty consistently.
We spent about an hour watching them. They mostly were rafting, but about an hour in the “raft” broke up, and we got a lot more heads, and a lot more noise. What was really interesting is that I think there was a mixture of both California Sea Lions and Steller Sea Lions in the raft. We certainly saw Steller Sea Lions swing back and forth, and seemed to join them.
And of course, no post would be complete without birds. There weren’t a lot of them, but a few were hanging out in the area.
There was a small flock of Buffleheads that hung about the whole time.
It was far away, so I’m not sure but I think this might
be a juvenile Pacific Loon.
A merganser.
This was the photo that made me think that there was a mix of California and Stellers.
Sadly, we had to leave if were were going to get cleaned up, have some lunch and get to the start of the walk for 2:00. So we got packed up and headed out. This was, according to the intro, the 30th New Year’s Day walk that they had organized. Quite cool. The turnout was a lot better than I expected, and we had a really nice walk in the woods, and down to the ocean.
Google Earth view of our walk.
Justine in the very nice afternoon light.
And of course, there were lots of interesting mushrooms about.
Towards the end of our walk there was a lone bad eagle in one of the trees, while another 4-5 soared above us.
Sadly, it was time to head home. We had a little bit of time before the ferry so we went down to Bellhouse Park to take advantage of the last bit of light in the day. We were immediately greeted by a pair of eagles in one of the trees. And we saw another river otter down by the water. He was actually up on the bank, but dove for the water when I sat down on the bench to look for whales.
The new year and new decade are off to a great start!