April 23rd, 2025
By Josh Silberg
British Columbia’s coastline is home to a plethora of birds, from kaleidoscopic harlequin ducks and majestic sandhill cranes, to flittering western sandpipers. The province sits in a prime location along the Pacific Flyway, a migratory path taken by tens of millions of birds each year from the southern tip of South America to high up in the Arctic. Discover some of the birds you may come across while kayaking the BC coast.
BALD EAGLES
If you love bald eagles, you’ve come to the right place. Their distinctive shrieks can be heard all over the area, although the sound may not be quite what you expect. In the movies, bald eagle calls are often replaced by a red-tailed hawk. But you’ll hear plenty of real bald eagle sounds while kayaking, and will definitely glimpse the iconic white-headed adults and brown, scruffy young ones perched in trees or soaring overhead.
OSPREYS
Ospreys are another bird of prey commonly seen along the coast. They’re more slender than a bald eagle and have whitish bellies and dark masks near their eyes. Be sure to take a moment and watch the osprey hunt for fish along the coast. When they spot a potential meal, a hovering osprey tucks their wings in and plunges toward the water. If successful, its talons will be clenching a fish when it flies away. After a dive, ospreys display an unmistakable shimmy from head to tail as they shake the water off their bodies.
SANDPIPERS
While relaxing on the beach, keep an eye out for sandpipers scurrying and flitting near the water’s edge. Some common species you might see are western sandpipers, semipalmated plovers, killdeer, dunlins, and sanderlings. Despite their tiny size, many of these sandpipers migrate huge distances from their nesting grounds on the Arctic tundra to feeding grounds down south. It takes a lot of food to make the round-trip.
ALCIDS
With plump bodies and short wings, the seabirds known as alcids are affectionately referred to as “flying footballs”. Alcids in BC include rhinoceros auklets, common murres, pigeon guillemots, horned puffins, tufted puffins, ancient murrelets, and marbled murrelets. For a long time, scientists had no idea where marbled murrelets nested or why they were declining. It turns out they were looking in the wrong place. Marbled murrelets are the only seabird that nests in the trees of old-growth forests.
Other birds you may see are loons, grebes, great blue herons, scoters, oystercatchers, and mergansers. Join one of our British Columbia tours and see these creatures in their natural habitats.
