Hornby Island Natural History Centre

Category: Exhibit


Nature Art

There is lots of new visitor art at the natural history centre this summer. Natural history visitors are always welcome to sketch and be inspired by nature! For an extensive list of creative nature activities to do at home with your kids,…

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Join us in Celebration

The Natural History Centre is starting the summer season with free tours open to the public. Join us from 3:30-4:30pm on June 23rd outside the school. As we celebrate new changes at the centre, we also reflect on the years gone by: 2015 is the…

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Woodworking Tools: The Hand Maul

As we prepare to create a new display of First Nations history on the island this summer, our treasure of the month for June is a tool traditionally used by the first peoples: the hand maul.  The maul is considered part of…

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The Hayward Heron

Our featured Treasure of the Month for May is a Great Blue Heron (Ardea Herodias):   A grey-blue bird with black plume on his head who stands tall near the herring life-cycle display. On Hornby Island, these birds are found in every season. They are most often spotted…

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New Songbird in the Exhibit

The Exhibit now has a pair of Western tanagers! We recently obtained a female tanager who now sits with a male tanager in the exhibit. She is a timely addition as this spring and summer we are working to enhance our songbird display. The new display will tell…

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Tiny Owl, Big Character

The Northern Saw-whet owl at the Natural History Centre was found by Sophie Courteau in the winter of 1995/96. He is a tiny owl with plenty of attitude: Saw-whet’s measure about 20 cm long with a short tail, large head, bright yellow eyes, dark bill, and reddish plumage…

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The Mighty Mosasaur

Each month this blog will be featuring a natural “treasure of the month”. The featured object for March is a mosasaur fossil that was found on Hornby Island. The mosasaur–an extinct marine mammal whose distant relatives are snakes and monitor lizards such as the Komodo Dragon–was discovered by…

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Celebrating 10 Years of Natural History!

This year Hornby Island Natural History celebrates ten years of sharing our natural treasures. Our collection began with a horned owl and a glaucous-winged gull in the 1980s. With the arrival of the beaver in the early 90s, the exhibit began to grow to the…

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