Watching birds on the beach is one of the reasons why I find it so enjoyable being at the seaside. We had the pleasure of seeing these five Sandpipers while visiting Vancouver Island in the late Summer. Long Beach is near Tofino, it's a favourite surfing spot of Canada's Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau.
Frankly speaking the birds made far better company than our Prime Minister ever would. We are nature lovers and observing these creatures play in the surf was fascinating. My partner always teases me that one day, I'm going to buy a telephoto lens and start birding. Honestly, that doesn't sound like such a bad idea.
We travel so much and foolishly sold our EOS 60D right before moving to Western Canada. I'm going to have to buy a camera that can handle quality lenses again. While these are good photos, I'd like great photos. The other day we went to a few art galleries in Banff, and the Brandon T. Brown Wilderness Gallery caught our eye. My dream would be to take larger, higher quality photos of our own, that we could blow up for the wall. There have been too many missed opportunities and we 'just' have a S20 or iphone 15 pro max handy.
I waited for about 15 minutes, which is never long enough to try and take a photo of all the birds in a row. It would be great if they could cooperate and face the same direction but nature is random. This is why we are so captivated by it.
Long Beach has water that is too cold to swim, it's 800 miles north of San Francisco and the currents come down from Alaska. The surfers wear wetsuits and are brave. We came here to enjoy Tofino and the Pacific Rim National Park. It was a long drive from Calgary, the second of our annual End of Summer Road Trips.
During a beautiful weekend in early September you can see how long, Long Beach is. It's relatively empty and fairly remote, being a 90 minute ferry from North Vancouver followed by a three hour drive. The isolation is what makes this place such a national treasure.
Thanks for viewing and Happy New Year.
All shots taken on an s20 or iphone 15 pro Max and are unfiltered.