Thursday, August 20, 2009

Fruitful searches part II

Next I headed out toward the Nanaimo Lakes area where I had looked a few weeks earlier.

That search ended at a TimberWest gate where a nice young man told me I had to pay two dollars to continue to the lakes.

What? A logging company, given public forest land for free by the B.C. government, now wants to charge me to go to the lake?

I don't think so.

I ended up looking along the Nanaimo River that day with no luck. Had a really nice swim, though.

The rumoured nest I was looking for was supposed to be in a patch of woods that had a no trespassing sign on one access point, which I skirted around until I found a path on the other side.

As always, prepared for my task, I tiptoed over thorny blackberry vines in sandals leaving trails of blood.

No osprey.

But the man at the wharf told me about another nest out at Duke Point, where the ferry runs from Nanaimo to Tsawwassen. He said I could get permission to visit the site when the port office opened on Monday.

Right.

Off to Duke Point.



I'm not going to say how I knew about the first two locations. OK, I will. I Googled ‘osprey nests in Nanaimo’ and they were pinpointed on Google maps. Ahhh, the cushy life of a modern naturalist.

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