For almost the entire month of April we were at the North end of the Island near Port McNeill at Cluxewe and sister Carol & husband Ian were at our house with Frances Reid.
It was a peaceful and productive time at Cluxewe (Bob birding / Yolanda weaving). We went home for April 8th to 11th to insure and pick up Gr@y, so we’d have an extra bedroom for us to stay in when we had visitors.
The McDougall siblings were together with us in mid-April and Bob and Carol went on birding walks and together we went to Port Alice (where we saw a humpback whale in the harbour), to Port Hardy for coffee and shops, back again to Port McNeill to see the yarn bombing, and to Alert Bay to visit the U’mista Cultural Centre (which Yolanda has wanted to visit since it opened with a collection of re-patriated cultural artifacts and art while she was studying First Nations art and culture for her UBC undergraduate degree).
One day in early April we were looking at local event listings and noticed the Sointula Bird Count. Knowing we would be at the Manning Bird Count in mid-June we signed up – mostly to find out what a bird count is all about. We took trailer Gr@y for two nights to Malcolm Island and had a great time getting to know the history of this unique community and participating in the bird count. We learned that knowing the bird sounds is important, and that taking photos was secondary. However, they did appreciate Bob and Bruce’s photos of the Northern Mocking Bird, which had not been seen on Malcolm Island in the past. The data gathered was shared between groups at the end-of-day potluck.
Frances’ parents, Dave and Johanne Reid arrived at Cluxewe from Lethbridge on April 23rd and Yolanda went down the Island for a day with little Francis and to bring Frances Reid (whose last UVic exam was April 24th) to rendezvous with her parents and travel back to Lethbridge for the summer. One of the days with the Reids we went to San Joseph Bay and on another we did a circle trip of Sointula and Alert Bay from Port McNeil.
