July 23 - Victoria Vacation - Day 1

I'll stretch the definition of my birding blog to include some photos of people and stuffed birds. Edith and I took a four day trip over to Vancouver Island. We stayed at a lovely Bed and Breakfast in Metchosin, which happened to have a nice collection of birds in the backyard.

Of course, there's always a couple of photos taken on the ferry ride.






After the ferry crossing we headed into downtown Victoria where we toured the Royal BC Museum.

The main attraction was a travelling Ancient Egypt exhibit. I felt I'd seen some of these exhibits before at Expo 86 in Vancouver, but that was 32 years ago. I'll only caption each photo briefly as I didn't take notes.

Egyptian Lion

Hatshepsut - fifth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt - second female Pharaoah




Not exactly Liz Taylor lookalike

Nefertiti

Book of the Dead

Isis

We also visited the permanent BC Natural history exhibit, where I felt more comfortable identifying the exhibits.

Prairie Falcon - close relative to the Peregrine Falcon

White-throated Swift - can be seen at Vaseux Lake in the Okanagan

Walrus and Seals

Common Murres - can be seen on BC coast or Point Roberts

Tufted Puffins - a bird I have not ever seen

Snow Goose - common in Lower Mainland in Winter

Wilson's Snipe - unique shorebird can be seen in Okanagan and perhaps Lower Mainland

We returned to Victoria on the 25th to celebrate my birthday with a lunch at the Empress Hotel. I took this shot of the old CPR Steamship Terminal building after lunch.