It’s been a busy start to the new year. Between our annual sales conference and a short trip to San Antonio for DISTRIBUTECH (an annual utility trade show), I had planned a weekend on Galiano. As Justine was a way in Europe, a friend and I had planned to go over to build a wood shed, but something came up and so I was on my own.
With all the snow and rain, we had a bit of a flood going on.
The wood to build the wood shed is all ready for the next time.
It was raining pretty steadily as i headed up to the property. It was really too wet to do much work, so I puttered around the place checking things out, doing some small jobs and hoping the weather was going to clear. It really didn’t, so I decided to head back south.
As I drove south, the weather started to lift, so I pulled into Retreat Cove (where the sand caves are) to see what was going on. It ended up being a pretty good stop.
A woman on a SUP floated by at one point.
There was a fair-sized flock of mostly buffleheads, with a small group of common goldeneyes.
One of the reasons I like this spot is that belted kingfishers are regular visitors. Or maybe they nest here? There were two this time - one not shy of the camera, and one that you could hear, but not see.
There were also hooded mergansers in the cove.
Male and female hooded merganser.
After hanging out for a bit, I continued south. Spr of the moment, I chose to drive downa new road that I’d not been down before. I soon discovered yet another new water access point - one of the best thing about Galiano are the public access to the water - and so I parked and headed down to the shore. At the end of the road was an interesting B&B that had a spectacular location, right on the water.
The B&B was in a great spot on the ocean.
The path down to the ocean went right along the edge of the B&B, and lead down a steep slope to the water. Fortunately, the tide had gone out somewhat, so there was some room on the rocks to set-up. With all the rain, the small creek that runs into the ocean was raging, and the small waterfall created a lot of noise.
This horned grebe, in it’s non breeding plumage was quite happy to hang out at the base of the waterfall and put on a bit of a show.
A river otter heading out to find some dinner.
As I was hanging out at the water, in addition to the horned grebe, a river otter swam out from shore, and headed out into the straight. He headed a long way out, and I lost sight of him for a while. Meanwhile, the grebe was quite active putting on a show.
After a while the otter came back to shore with dinner.
It looked like a pretty good sized crab.
It was getting dark, so it was time to head to the cabin. I headed down, got settled in and did a bit of work. After a while, I headed over to the pub for some dinner. It was quiet - I pretty much had the place to myself - so I had a nice dinner then headed back to the cabin. I did a bit more work then called it a night.
Sunday morning I was up at a reasonable time, and did a bit more work hoping for the rain to end. Eventually I got my wish, and so i packed up and headed out. I headed up to Bluffs park to see what was going on. It was a lot windier than I had expected, but that meant the eagles were having some fun riding the air currents. There were also lots of small birds flitting about in the oak trees just below the ridge.
A nice view of a Chestnut-backed Chickadee
The eagles were soaring on this windy morning.
The eagles were in full-on mating displays, diving each other and wheeling in the sky.
I spent a good hour up at bluffs. I had brought the drone and was hoping to get some footage, but it was too windy to fly. Too bad - it could have been cool. From the Bluffs, I headed over to a beach we like to go to. Sadly, the tide was so high that there was no beach left to walk on, but the good news was that there were lots of little birds hanging out in the trees on the path down to the beach.
As i needed to do some work up at the property, it was time to head out. I did spend some time flying the drone, to get a bit more practice and see what I could see. I’ll work on some of the footage. The processing of video takes a lot of time!
I spent some time working the chainsaw and cutting down some more trees, then also spent some time pulling and cutting broome. It wasn’t a huge day, but I made some progress. It was quite satisfying to finally get the fallen arbutus tree cut down into a more manageable size.
The broome pile I cut down on Sunday.
Towards the end of the day I called it quits, and headed back to the ferry. I made a stop at the beach below our property, and I took the drone down to see if I could record the seals and maybe sea lions. As I got down to the beach, some sea lions went by, and there were seals about. But by the time I got the drone set-up, it had started to rain. So that only allowed me one quick flight.
As it was getting dark I headed back to the ferry and got ready for the trip home.