The Monday morning short hike today was along the Cable Bay Trail just south of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. The trail itself is a wonderfully immersive forest experience with huge trees, ferns, streams, rocks, fungi, moss, and birds. We breathed in more than our fair share of oxygen-rich forest air.
The prize at the end of the trail, though, was seeing lots and lots of California sea lions in the bay. We heard them long before we saw them, and when we saw them we were fascinated. It is sea lion mating season, so they were making their mating calls and leaping in and out of the water.
Snowbird of Paradise 
A trail that immerses one into a forest sounds lovely. Your pictures confirm it. What a great way to spend a morning!
You are right. It was a lovely way to spend a morning.
Lovely.
I felt swept away to a magic land in that forest. So beautiful. Then to see and hear the sea lions and appreciate how close to Spring we actually are! Robins are rampant around our home this year and a neighbor has trees that are covered in berries (not at all sure what sort). Robins can’t seem to get enough of these berries and I suspect there is a bit of fermentation involved. Our windows are being hit too often by errant robins. We have not found any bodies though. Oh the joys (?) of Spring!
It does feel like a magic land when you are in the middle of the forest. Even though it is only January, it does feel as though spring is around the corner.
I used to live in a house where birds often flew into the windows. I discovered that when the sky was reflected in the glass, they didn’t know it was a reflection. They always flew away after lying stunned on the deck for a while.