Comox Valley Naturalists Society

The regular monthly meeting of the Comox Valley Naturalists Society will be held May 16 2010, at 7:00 pm at the Florence Filberg Centre, 411 Anderton Avenue, Courtenay. The featured speaker will be the noted birder and trip leader, Joe Crichton, who will take us on a birding and natural history photo tour of Peru.

Joe was one of the founders 15 years ago of the Wildbird Tours operations which are now active in half a dozen countries. He has great expertise in not only birding, but also natural history, and tour guiding in many different areas. For our presentation he will lead us through Peru, a country which contains examples of 87 of the 103 recognized Life Zones in the world!

We journey from the Pacific shores to the High Andes then down into the Amazon Basin by the Manu Biosphere. The beauty of this trip is the variety of habitats, ranging from orchid laden cloud forest where Spectacled Bears and Cock-of-the-Rocks still live unmolested, to untouched Amazon rainforest where 13 species of Monkey abound and Giant Otters still exist in the ox-bow lakes. A trip to Manu is a trip to one of the world’s great wilderness areas where wildlife is still plentiful and nearly 1000 species of birds have been recorded. We conclude our journey in the Sacred Valley and then the fabled cities of Machu Picchu and Cusco. This will be a spectacular and colourful presentation.

Please come and join us to become better informed, as well as how you can help CVNS provide education and protection for B.C.’s natural environment.