Father Charles Brandt shares his message, inviting us to fall in love with the natural world.

We are looking for volunteers for the following project.

Migration Calendar Project: Father Charles Brandt left us with over 20,000 photographs, which were mostly of the bounty of plants and animals that are resident on the east coast of Vancouver Island. He collated this database of photographs by date, which captures the time of arrival of large varieties of mammals, fish and birds which migrate through this community. Some you already know when the herring, trumpeter swans and pink salmon arrive where you live. For Charles, their seasonal passage was like the heart beat of the natural world. One could find him just watching and listening for hours on end, with the same intensity of inner stillness and awareness as the bald eagles we see perched high in the Douglas firs, along the shorelines of Woodhus Slough, Miracle Beach, Oyster River, or the Courtenay River Estuary.

The Brandt Hermitage Society is looking for volunteers to build a calendar consisting of the arrival time and location of different animal migratory species, so that up and down the coast we can attune to nature’s heartbeat and experience the sense of wonder that captivated Charles. This calendar, focused on the east coast of Vancouver Island, would be eventually included in this website.

Taking in the heartbeat of nature is some of what Father Charles meant by “falling in love with the natural world.”

Tracking Migration Routes:

We invite you to learn more about the animal migrations through the Comox Strathcona watersheds.

https://explorer.audubon.org/home?legend=collapse&zoom=3&x=1306099.1620122588&y=2810864.562197212

Father Charles, while a student at Cornell University, spent a summer recording bird song throughout the eastern US, which became part of the early Cornell Lab bird call database.

Merlin: All About Birds

The following link provides recent birds sightings in the Comox Strathcona area. This is an excellent resource, where bird watchers post their latest sightings and best viewing locations. The link includes over 300 different species of birds sighted in the Comox Strathcona area.

https://ebird.org/region/CA-BC-CX?yr=all&m=

The following website highlights a broad diversity of wild plants and animals that make their home in the Comox Strathcona Region.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=49142&subview=map&view=species