Are you an experienced or novice birder? Are you an avid wildlife photographer? Would you enjoy the adventure of exploring the wild places of the Salish Sea for bird life?

If you answered yes to any of the above, then mark Saturday, April 5 on your calendar!

That’s the day of our first Specialty Bird Tour for 2025. This 6+hour springtime adventure will take us to Active Pass—a globally recognized Important Bird Area for the Bonaparte’s Gull, Pacific Loon and Brandt’s Cormorant.  We’ll look for tidal upwellings that bring marine organisms to the surface, attracting hundreds and sometimes thousands of hungry seabirds.

“Many of us have seen Active Pass while transiting through on a ferry but viewing it at eye level from a smaller vessel is an entirely new experience,” says veteran birder Liam Ragan with the Rocky Point Bird Observatory. “You can feel like you’re in the middle of a swirling snow globe of gulls, to say nothing of the other birds which are drawn there in migration.”

After Active Pass, we plan to explore rugged, rarely birded spots on the Gulf Islands side of the Strait of Georgia, such as the Belle Chain Islets and Tumbo Island, which are known for hosting large numbers of migratory shorebirds. Time permitting, we’ll make other birding stops on our way back to Victoria!

This “Active Pass and Islands to the East” tour is the first of five Specialty Birdwatching Tours in 2025 co-hosted by Eagle Wing Tours and the Rocky Point Bird Observatory (RPBO). On these tours, you’ll enjoy the comfort of our luxury semi-covered catamaran, 4 Ever Wild, as we take you to some of the Salish Sea’s most renowned birding hotspots.

Over the summer and fall, the other four tours will focus on the Race Rocks area, offshore Juan de Fuca, Haro Strait including Mandarte Island, and Smith Island and surrounding shallow banks. Learn more here.

In addition to Eagle Wing’s knowledgeable naturalists, each tour will have two RPBO experts on board to help with bird IDs and talk about life histories and conservation challenges. Following the tour, participants will receive a post-tour collection of images from Eagle Wing Tours and an eBird checklist from RPBO of the species we saw.

And there’s another bonus—your participation will help make a difference for the birds. Five per cent of gross revenue from each tour is donated back to the RPBO to help support the great conservation and education work they do in and around the Salish Sea!

What sort of birds do we typically see in the southern Salish Sea in the winter and early spring months? Learn more here.

Book your Specialty Bird Tour online or give us a call at 1-866-703-9862. We look forward to having you on board!

Blog published March 2025