Every Spring, the Birds Come Back to the Inlet Outside Our Tent
There is a moment every April when the mudflats outside the Stillwater tent fill with fluttering silver wings. Thousands of shorebirds stop here during their migration north. Western Sandpipers mostly, small and quick and shimmering when they lift together into the sky. They move like one thing. It's the kind of sight that makes you stop walking and just watch.
We get to see it every season. The tent sits right on the inlet at Hotel Zed Tofino, which happens to be one of the best viewing spots on Vancouver Island for this migration. Guests come in carrying the noise of their day and leave to find the mudflats alive with birds. It changes the ending of every appointment this time of year.
If you're planning a trip to Tofino in late April or early May, you're arriving at a remarkable time.
Tofino's annual Shorebird Festival runs from April 27 to May 1, 2026. Organized by Raincoast Education Society, the festival brings together birders, biologists, and curious visitors for guided walks on the mudflats, evening presentations, and film screenings. One of the highlights this year is a screening of Sandpipers' Last Supper, showing April 30 and May 1. Expert-led birding walks happen daily throughout the festival, with times varying each day. It's one of those Tofino events that feels like a local secret even when it isn't.
The birds don't stay long. They rest, they feed on the mudflats, and they continue north. If you're here during that window, you're witnessing something that happens once a year, in this place, on this coast. We'll be open throughout the festival. If you'd like to pair a morning on the mudflats with an afternoon in the forest tent, the combination is a very good one.
The tent is open. The birds are here.
stillwatertofino.com
Tofino Shorebird Festival: April 27 to May 1, 2026
Organized by Raincoast Education Society Events at the Tofino mudflats and surrounding inlet
Stillwater Nature Spa: on the inlet at Hotel Zed, Tofino BC
