Birding, March 21, 2026: Hail Satan and less evil returns

Where: Burnaby Lake (Burnaby), Como Lake (Coquitlam)
Weather: Partly sunny, 7-8°C
NOTE: I am posting this a week late, but I had the write-up ready to go, I just hadn't gotten any photos ready. I've included a few but will have a proper gallery soon--for reals!

Also, the first birding of Spring!

Burnaby Lake

The lake looking more ripply than usual.

Nic suggested we do the full loop around Burnaby Lake, which is around 10.3 km or “You will achieve your 10,000-step goal no problem.”

We started at the Avalon parking lot, then went counter-clockwise, stopping at Cariboo Dam, Piper Spit, the Butterfly Garden by the Nature House, Philips Point, the rowing pavilion, the bridge on Deer Lake Brook, and anywhere we saw or heard birds.

Piper Spit was replete with people feeding the birds. We also saw multiple cyclists and dogs walking about off-leash. It was basically “Rules for thee, not for me” day. Note: the dogs and cyclists were not at Piper Spit, so there are still some limits in place.

The pier gave us our first look at newly-arrived migrants–the Brown-headed Cowbird. I did not get any decent shots, but we’ll have more chances over the spring and summer. Tree and Violet-Green Swallows were also diving around all over the lake here. Nic and I both documented this with a collection of artisanal blurry photos. There was also a red-eyed pigeon here, looking like it had just finished a sermon at the Pigeon Church of Satan.

And the only remnant of the land mas near the pier was once again occupied by gulls, whose golf ball collection is now up to three.

After this, we checked out the scenery from the viewing platform just west of the pier, then headed to Philips Point, where we saw more scenery and a Song Sparrow.

The long stretch of Cottonwood Trail yielded more Song Sparrows, then the bridge over Still Creek let us glimpse a Pied-billed Grebe. It dove a few times and the last time it never came back into view, possibly returning to the pocket dimension grebes hail from. A flock of Cackling Geese circled the sportsball field a few times, then came in for a landing, allowing us to get some shots of them grazing. A few crows in the background were taking delight in some kind of baked good one had acquired.

Around the south shore of the lake we apparently entered woodpecker country, seeing both a Pileated Woodpecker and a pair of Red-breasted Sapsuckers, the only downside being that they were in the “crane your neck” part of the trees.

We also heard, but never saw, several frogs.

We did see some water strider bugs in a stand of water adjacent to the trial, including a pair that were busy trying to make more striders, if you know what I mean. It’s that time of year for everyone.

Como Lake

A serene-looking Como Lake.

After Burnaby Lake, we elected to tackle a smaller body of water with Como Lake, whose loop is about 10% that of Burnaby Lake. The scenery was nice enough, and we saw a lot of geese pairing off. There was also a pair of male Mallards that also seemed paired off, or maybe they were just good friends.

We ended by observing a robin on the grass yoinking large, juicy worms out of the grounsd and eating them with relish. Not actual relish, just zeal.

At this point we both had nearly 20,000 steps and opted to call it a day instead of walking even further. Between yesterday’s run at the lake and the birding, I’d covered around 55,000 steps in the two days. That’s good enough for me!

The Shots

Shot with a Canon EOS R7 with 18-150 mm kit lens and 100-400 mm telephoto.

A coot cooting.
All hail Satan Pigeon.
Have another close-up, this time an American Robin.

The Birds (and other critters)

Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:

  • American Robin
  • Bewick’s Wren
  • Black-capped Chickadee
  • Brown-headed Cowbird
  • Dark-eyed Junco
  • Fox Sparrow
  • Golden-crowned Sparrow
  • Northern Flicker
  • Pileated Woodpecker
  • Red-breasted Sapsucker
  • Red-winged Blackbird
  • Ruby-crowned Kinglet
  • Song Sparrow
  • Spotted Towhee
  • Tree Swallow
  • Violet-Green Swallow

Waterfowl and shorebirds:

  • American Coot
  • American Wigeon
  • Bufflehead
  • Cackling Goose
  • Canada Goose
  • Common Merganser (probably)
  • Double-crested Cormorant
  • Great Blue Heron
  • Green-winged Teal
  • Mallard
  • Northern Pintail
  • Pied-billed Grebe
  • Scaup
  • Wood Duck

Common:

  • American Crow
  • Rock Pigeon
  • Satanic Rock Pigeon
  • Seagulls aplenty

Raptors:

  • Bald Eagle

Non-birds:

  • Airplanes
  • Golf balls

Run 1,021: Men interfering and cranes (the flying kind)

View from Cariboo Dam, pre-run: Cloudy, but clearing, and nicely mild.

Today’s run was remarkably similar to Wednesday’s, except it was drier and milder, both of which were nice.

But like the previous run, I got off to a sluggish start and slowly improved and finished with a middling overall pace of 5:49/km, but also another fairly low BPM of 145. Conditions were generally fine as we’ve only had some light rain in the past few days, though there was one spot on the trail that someone had improvised a bridge on:

Keep your feet dry and test your balance, together at last.

The downside is no one knows where to go to park anymore.

There was one dog off-leash and while he was not entirely a good boy (he trundled over to my side of the trail), he didn’t directly interfere. I still had unkind thoughts toward the owner.

But overall, today’s run was fine. There was another topless jogger, though at 10C, I can kind of see it. I dressed in two layers and one might have sufficed, but I kept the hoodie on. With the sun mostly tucked away, it didn’t really feel warm, as such.

And good news–I did three runs this week. Hooray for consistency.

As for the men interfering, on the river trail a crew had the trail blocked off about midway up because they were messing with a tree that had fallen in the river. If you really want to close off the trail, the signs should go at the start of the trail, not a meter from the work being done. I went through, it seemed safe. On the way back they were gone and I can’t say the work they did looks any better than what was there before, but I am not a treeologist.

The next men also blocking a path were right near Cariboo Dam–exactly where I start my run. They had the area roped off and were pounding stakes into the ground near the river edge, behind an existing fence, for reasons. This time I didn’t attempt to go through and went around via the Avalon entrance. They were also gone when I finished my run, but their stakes remained, doing…something or other.

And the cranes were a pair of Sandhill Cranes, which I haven’t seen in a long time, looking for food at the sports field and probably planning on having babbies soon. Spring is truly here.

Be still, creek.

Stats:

Run 1,021
Average pace: 5:49/km
Training status: Productive
Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW)
Start: 12:50 p.m.
Distance: 5.03 km
Time: 29:10
Weather: Cloudy
Temp: 10°C
Humidity: 61-59%
Wind: light
BPM: 145
Weight: 169.7 pounds
Total distance to date: 6,930 km
Devices: Garmin Forerunner 265, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: Saucony Peregrine 15 (200/308/508)

Music: Shuffle mode

The HNIC theme I never thought I’d hear again

Thanks to YouTube’s sometimes erratic algorithm, I was offered a video of the 1968 Hockey Night in Canada theme. Back in Duncan and growing up in the 1970s, HNIC was a Saturday night staple in our home, with the living room TV always tuned to the game. I’ve heard the theme song probably hundred of times, but the last time I heard it may have been the last time I watched HNIC, which was probably the mid 80s.

Until tonight. And hearing it again, I not only felt that intoxicating pull of nostalgia you get from childhood music, but it also struck me what a damn good theme it is. The brass section just blasts the thing. No wonder so many think of it as Canada’s unofficial second anthem.

Run 1,020: Drizzle in my shizzle

Brunette River, pre-run: A little showery, a bit breezy.

Sorry, I couldn’t think of a better title. 😛

I did my best to wait out the rain, but it was not to be, so I had an early afternoon run in light rain. It was cooler than normal at only 5C and felt closer to freezing because there were some wind gusts. Not my favourite running conditions!

The suggested workout was recovery, so I took that to heart and adopted a more leisurely pace. By the second km my pace had dipped to 6:03/km, which was a bit too leisurely, so I picked it up and finished with an average of 5:51/km. My BPM was quite low, at 142, reflecting the more casual stride.

I only saw two people on the trail: a guy wearing just a t-shirt (well, and also pants) despite the rain. He was walking a dog on-leash. Good boy (the dog owner)! The other was another jogger, who I passed twice as we were both looping the river trail. He wore a very bright red cap (the nice thing in Canada is a red cap is just a red cap) and pink running shoes. He’s not the first guy I’ve seen wearing pink running shoes recently, so this may be the year when pink is the hot colour for runners. Hot pink, one might say.

I should start looking for new shoes soon, myself. The Peregrine 15s have almost 500 km on them of combined running/walking.

A few other random notes:

  • The third song to come up in shuffle mode was “Echoes”, which kept playing until about a minute after my run ended. I’m not sure if it’s good jogging music, but I couldn’t bring myself to skip forward.
  • The rain stopped almost immediately after my run. I’m glad it stopped, but sometimes I wonder if Mother Nature is really Nelson Muntz.
It is impossible to take a photo of this pond and have it look level. Also, bonus ducks.

Stats:

Run 1,020
Average pace: 5:51/km
Training status: Productive
Location: Brunette River Trail
Start: 1:29 p.m.
Distance: 5.03 km
Time: 29:23
Weather: Light rain and drizzle
Temp: 5°C (felt like 0°C)
Humidity: 82%
Wind: light to moderate
BPM: 142
Weight: 170.5 pounds
Total distance to date: 6,925 km
Devices: Garmin Forerunner 265, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: Saucony Peregrine 15 (195/295/490)

Music: Shuffle mode, but mostly "Echoes" by Pink Floyd

The dual boot lives

Last night I decided to try installing Kubuntu again. I first deleted the EFI partition that had weirdly been created on my backup HDD that I mainly use for bird photographs. The creation of this partition is osmething that I missed before during a previous attempt.

I then ran the Kubuntu installer, selected my secondary SSD and it correctly created an EFI partition on that. When I restarted, the (somewhat ugly) Grub menu appeared, allowing me to select Kubuntu or Windows. Woo.

But now I think I’d like to try Mint again, I think I prefer Cinammon over KDE. I am never satisfied. 😛

Run 1,019: A cromulent start to the week

View from Cariboo Dam, pre-run: Work was being done in the area, hence the Metro Vancouver vehicles.

Today was the third time in the past three days I’ve completed the loop at Burnaby Lake, though I wasn’t carrying my camera with me this time.

Instead, it was the start of my weekly set of runs and once again, it was partly sunny, though a bit cooler than Friday, so the two layers stayed on for the duration. Shortly after I ended my 5K I had a guy pass me who was obviously not as sensitive to the temperature, as he was going topless.

There are two kinds of guys that run without a shirt:

  • Guys who want to show off their six-pack
  • Guys who look like they’ve had a few too many six-packs

There is nothing in-between. Average guys seem topless-averse.

Today’s run was clockwise, and very similar to Friday, with only a one-second difference in the average pace and a one beat difference in BPM (both were a bit faster/better today). I didn’t experience any issues, the trail was relatively dry after a few blissful days of not-rain and only one dog was off-leash.

In all, a good start to the week.

Still Creek, post-run: Back to the stillness.

Stats:

Run 1,019
Average pace: 5:44/km
Training status: Productive
Location: Burnaby Lake (CW)
Start: 11:15 a.m.
Distance: 5.03 km
Time: 28:50
Weather: Partly sunny
Temp: 7-8°C
Humidity: 62%
Wind: light
BPM: 148
Weight: 172.1 pounds
Total distance to date: 6,920 km
Devices: Garmin Forerunner 265, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: Saucony Peregrine 15 (190/291/481)

Music: Voices, Hall and Oates

My latest Linux escapades

I thought my new PC would be well-prepared for Linux–it has an AMD CPU and an AMD GPU, just like Linux distros love.

And in reality, I have installed a few distros with some success:

  • Linux Mint, my old standby
  • Kubuntu (Ubuntu, but with the KDE environment)
  • KDE Neon (for when you want the very latest KDE)
  • Pop_OS (to try out the Cosmic DE1Desktop Environment)

The problem in each case was a variation of one of the following:

  • The distro would not see my Windows 11 install and thus not create a proper dual-boot setup.
  • The distro WOULD see Windows 11, but would still not create a dual boot setup, either by error or design (some distros will not do this without you going in with a hammer and fixing it yourself).

This would lead to things like having to mash the F8 key when switching OSes, which is a pain compared to a nice Grub menu. I faffed about on several of the distros, convinced I could sort it out. I could not.

I tried a bunch of things to help distros see Windows 11, from disabling fast boot, to twiddling with various BIOS settings, to unplugging USB drives. None of this has made any difference.

I thought about taking the SSD from my old PC with Linux Mint on it and adding it to the new PC, but this has its own problems:

  • Probably needing to run some kind of boot repair to get Grub working properly.
  • The old system has an Nvidia card and I don’t know how gracefully Mint would handle suddenly running on an AMD system before the right drivers could be installed.
  • Also, opening up both PCs and moving the drive is just a hassle, and I’m kind of reaching my hassle limit.

So at the moment I’m at a standstill. I think I might try either Mint or Kubuntu again. Mint I know will not recognize Windows 11, and the manual partioning seems weirdly uncooperative. It is very possible this is a me issue. Or I might try Kubuntu again, which has generally been a smoother experience. I’ve even thought about nuking Windows 11 altogether, but I don’t have replacements for all the programs I use quite yet, so I’d prefer to dual boot for now.

I’ll probably decide on how I next want to faff about in the next few days.

Until then, here is a penguin, but not the Linux penguin.

Some shots around Burnaby Lake, March 20, 2026

I took these shots after today’s run, mostly around the sports fields at Burnaby Lake. There was water everywhere. And geese.

As is my wont, I have used the totally retro Polaroid theme from FooGallery. Enjoy!

All shot on my iPhone 12.

Run 1,018: Spring 2026! Sun! Puddles!

View from Cariboo Dam, pre-run. The sky cleared up substantially during the run.

It was my first run of Spring 2026 and as a bonus it was both partly sunny and unusually mild, a nice change after multiple days of torrential rains.

I wore two layers (hoodie and t-shirt), which actually turned out to be one too many, as I doffed my Echo hoodie about halfway through the run, meaning I got an early start to my 2026 tan. 😀

I missed Wednesday’s run due to said torrential rains and felt a little sloggy (that’s the best way I can describe it) today but kept up a fairly consistent pace throughout, with an average of 5:45/km and a BPM of 149. Neither is outstanding, but both are perfectly cromulent.

Strangely a lot of dogs were off-leash. Bad dog owners! Fortunately the dogs themselves were well-behaved.

The trail was in pretty good shape despite the heavy rain–or so I thought! It was actually fine right up till the end of the run, where the newly-resurfaced stretch was seeing water ingress:

It should be fine with more normal amounts of rain. I think.

Puddles aside, it was nice to return to the lake, get some sun and round off the week with a decent effort.

View from the bridge over Deer Lake Brook, post-run.

Stats:

Run 1,018
Average pace: 5:45/km
Training status: Productive
Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW)
Start: 11:24 a.m.
Distance: 5.03 km
Time: 28:56
Weather: Partly sunny
Temp: 12-13°C
Humidity: 89-85%
Wind: light to moderate
BPM: 149
Weight: 171.3 pounds
Total distance to date: 6,915 km
Devices: Garmin Forerunner 265, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: Saucony Peregrine 15 (185/278/463)

Music: Shuffle mode (R.E.M.)

Efficiency in TV programming, Stargate SG-1 edition

I’ve never watched Stargate SG-1, but I knew the series was shot around Vancouver. Looking over the Wikipedia page, I found this entry for one of the characters, played by Corin Nemec:

From the country of Kelowna on the planet Langara. As someone who worked at Langara College for almost nine years, I find this quite amusing. It also reminds me of a first season episode of The X-Files where Mulder and Scully go the sleepy town of Steveston, Massachusetts, which looks suspiciously like Steveston, BC. I mean, it saved them having to change any of the signs when shooting on location. It’s just smart planning.

Run 1,017: Sprinkles (not the kind you put on cupcakes)

Brunette River, pre-run: Swollen like a Botox operation gone wrong. Or something.

We are in the midst of a four day “atmospheric river event” which means rain and plenty of it. I checked the forecast and tried to time today’s run during the one likely gap in the showers. And I mostly got it, woo. It sprinkled briefly around the 2K mark, but was otherwise dry for the run. It rained on the walk back, but it was more a steady drizzle, so I didn’t get drenched like last Wednesday. Nice, I sez.

As for the run, I started out a bit sluggish and flagged a bit on the second km, but picked up speed and finished with a pace of 5:43/km, a little slower than Friday, but also with a BPM of 147, which was appropriately lower. My max heart rate got adjusted on the Garmin watch to 165, so I have a goof amount of headroom.

The river trail was fairly quiet, though I did see a semi-regular out for a walk, all bundled up. Speaking of, I wore my three winter layers because it was around 5C when I was originally going to head out, but rose to 8C by the time I left, so I was a bit overdressed. Still, always better to be over than under in the winter. You can always shed layers, but you can’t magically manifest them out of nowhere (if anyone can do this, please teach me).

In all, a good start to what is likely to be a soggy ol’ week.

Post-run: The river banks are getting more green!

Stats:

Run 1,017
Average pace: 5:43/km
Training status: Productive
Location: Brunette River Trail
Start: 1:17 p.m.
Distance: 5.04 km
Time: 28:50
Weather: Cloudy, some sprinkles
Temp: 8°C
Humidity: 87%
Wind: light
BPM: 147
Weight: 170.8 pounds
Total distance to date: 6,910 km
Devices: Garmin Forerunner 265, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: Saucony Peregrine 15 (180/265/445)

Music: Shuffle mode