View from Cariboo Dam, pre-run: Sun and summer-like conditions.
Yes, a run of contradictions (seemingly). Also, lots of coyote alert signs, but so far no coyotes.
My plan was pretty basic: Knowing it would be unusually warm today (and it was–18C for the run) I was going to go slow and steady. I achieved both, though the slow part was maybe a bit slower than expected, with an overall pace of 5:58/km. You’d think my BPM would be lower, too, but no, it was the same as Friday, when I had a pace of 5:43/km: 152.
The difference, of course, is that it was 7-8 degrees cooler on Friday.
Still, I’m not disappointed. It’s challenging to suddenly run in conditions your body isn’t used to and I didn’t experience any complications on today’s run, other than it just being a lot warmer than usual. Humidity was low at 44, but the lack of wind helped keep my mouth from drying out. I was licking my lips a lot, though, like a nervous suspect in a whodunit.
Near the start, some smartypants ran by shirtless, with a big grin on his face, like he knew how awesome his abs were. He didn’t even seem to be wearing proper running shorts, so maybe he just spontaneously decided to show off. And I did see one regular jogger, plus a bunch of other runners I didn’t recognize. All dogs encountered were good boys or girls.
The incipient snow I encountered around the 8 km mark, which was the first bit of “snow” starting to fall from the cottonwood trees. This feels early, but it tracks with the warmer weather.
In all, a decent start to the week.
Still Creek, with the green starting to overtak the yellow.
Stats:
Run 1,028 Average pace: 5:58/km Training status: Productive Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW) Start: 10:52 a.m. Distance: 5.03 km Time: 28:57 Weather: Sunny Temp: 18°C Humidity: 44% Wind: light BPM: 152 Weight: 169.0 pounds Total distance to date: 6,965 km Devices: Garmin Forerunner 265, Samsung Galaxy S26, AirPods (3rd generation) Shoes: Saucony Peregrine 15 (235/395/630)
Where: Blackie Spit/Crescent Beach, Serpentine Wildlife Management Area (Serpentine Fen), Green Timbers Lake (Surrey) Weather: Partly sunny, 16-18°C
We spent the day birding in the city where tomorrow lives. We did not encounter tomorrow, but we did see a Tufted Duck!
Blackie Spit
A small bay lacking most of its water at Blackie Spit.
It was unusually mild and as a bonus, there was almost no breeze at all at Blackie Spit, so it really did feel like 16C or warmer, thus making this our first shorts-wearing birding of 2026.
Despite the balmy weather, there weren’t as many people there as expected. The super low tide might have been a factor.
Walking the path to the end of the spit itself, we had copious opportunities to get snazzy shots of the equally snazzy Savannah Sparrows, some of which were singing their little hearts out, because spring has sprung, and you can’t mate with yourself.
At the end of the spit, we spotted some Long-billed Dowitchers, but they were rather far off, thanks to the aforementioned extreme low tide.
The trail to the pump station yielded better results, with sparrows a-plenty in the trees, bushes and on the ground. A female blackbird sat proudly on a branch for a bit, holding a juicy ol’ caterpillar in her bill. Yum!
With low tide putting many waterfowl out of reach of even our telephoto lenses, we headed to Serpentine Fen, to see if our luck would change.
Serpentine Fen
One of the larger ponds at Serptentine Fen, with Mt. Baker in the background.
As it turned out, the Serpentine River was also probably the lowest we’ve ever seen and the overall number of birds was relatively small, though we did get some decent variety, with an eagle in a tree near the start, a few herons, a cormorant and a Canada Goose nesting on what would normally be a small island but is currently a hill surrounded by a lot of mud. I’m sure the future goose babbies will be safe, regardless.
An unexpected surprise came in the form of a few Greater Yellowlegs strutting around some of the ponds in the area, mingling with the shovelers and Mallards.
The view of Mt. Baker was quite nice, too, with a tuft of white cloud caught on the top of the peak and being pulled away by the wind like cotton candy. I took a photo using my phone’s 30x digital zoom. It looks like an impressionist painting. My camera yielded a less opinionated version of the mountain.
Green Timbers Lake
Green Timbers Lake, looking northeast.
And speaking of tufts…
We originally planned to go to Brydon Lagoon, but Nic had already driven a lot for reasons, so he suggested we go to the closer Green Timbers Lake instead, as a rare Tufted Duck has been seen there recently.
We arrived and I noted again how they have two signs over each other, one that says WELCOME and the other which says DANGER.
And lo, there in pretty much the middle of the lake (a bit far away, boo) was a Tufted Duck.
If you check the link, you’ll see the usual range of a Tufted Duck is Europe, Asia and Africa, none of which are North America, so he is a long way off course. He didn’t seem to mind.
Despite being a lifer, I felt strangely indifferent to seeing it, because they look almost exactly like a scaup, just with a little black mullet on the back. I like scaups, don’t get me wrong, but it’s…just not very different.
We ended our visit to the lake with a Douglas squirrel going big on a pile of sunflower seeds atop a fence post, giving us a nice cute-squirrel-pose before wrapping up.
In retrospect, the number of photos I took vs. the variety of birds we saw is probably among the most skewed ever–only 384 photos in total (and if that sounds like a lot, I regularly shoot over twice that and sometimes more than 1,000–without using burst mode, too!) The particular circumstances and locations meant a lot of the birds were far away or too fleeting to get shots of. But sometimes that’s the way it goes.
The weather for the third week of April was totally fabulous, though, apart from some increasing high cloud later on.
The Shots
Shot with a Canon EOS R7 with 18-150 mm kit lens and 100-400 mm telephoto. Some scenery shots taken on a Samsung Galaxy S26.
A few shots, gallery pending:
A Bald Eagle in very dull, dim lighting.A boat racing through one of the narrow strips of water at Crescent Beach.Singing Savannah Sparrow.White blossoms and a White-crowned Sparrow.Pondering which sunflower seed to gobble next.
The Birds (and other critters)
Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:
American Bushtit
American Goldfinch
American Robin
Anna’s Hummingbird
Black-capped Chickadee
Dark-eyed Junco
Golden-crowned Sparrow
House Finch
Orange-crowned Warbler
Red-winged Blackbird
Rufous Hummingbird (heard)
Savannah Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Spotted Towhee
White-crowned Sparrow
Waterfowl and shorebirds:
American Coot
American Wigeon
Bufflehead
Canada Goose
Common Loon (heard)
Double-crested Cormorant
Great Blue Heron
Greater Yellowlegs
Green-winged Teal
Killdeer
Long-billed Dowitcher
Marsh Wren (heard)
Lesser Scaup
Mallard
Northern Shoveler
Tufted Duck
Wood Duck
Common:
American Crow
Some gulls
Raptors:
Bald Eagle
Non-birds:
A single turtle sunning itself, probably a Western painted turtle
A Douglas Squirrel nomming away on sunflower seeds
I will have today’s birding adventure up tomorrow (Sunday), but in the meantime, enjoy this photo of a bald eagle I took today, with slightly enhanced sky. (Eagle photo with unenhanced sky coming tomorrow.)
View from Cariboo Dam, pre-run: Calm, mild and sunny.
Temperatures were a bit warmer today, but still seasonal and I posted a slightly better run vs. Wednesday, basically flipping my pace on the first and second km, but hewing closely otherwise. I didn’t experience any issues and didn’t try pushing hard or anything. BPM was up slightly to 152, but more effort, so it’s fine. The peak was 158, so it stayed within a pretty narrow range throughout, even when I was running harder.
I ran clockwise, starting at the mysteriously re-locked water fountain by the dam. I stopped to check the water fountain at the Nature House post-run and it was working, so they seem to have singled out the one at the dam for some reason. The flow of water at the Nature House fountain was a bit low, as if it was set for the world’s least thirsty person. It was still nice.
Just before I started my run, a young guy dressed all in black ran by. This meant when I started he was within sight of me, not far ahead. No biggie, I assumed that the benefit of youth would see him dash off and out of sight soon enough. But this did not happen.
Instead, it seemed his pace was very close to mine. I faced a dilemma: On the one hand, I don’t like having a “pace car” person running in front of me, and on the other, I didn’t particularly feel like turning on the jets to get past him. The solution, as it tutned out, was to do nothing. I was actually running slightly faster than him, so it took minimal effort to pass him, which I did.
The weather, being pleasant and mostly sunny, brought out a fair number of people–many of them fellow joggers–but I only once had someone almost walk into my path when her partner moved to let me by–and she then tried to take over his spot because maybe she was secretly coveting it?
The stretch of trail between the rowing pavilion parking lot and sports fields is getting increasingly flooded and in several spots has water more or less permanently pouring across it. I am hoping it gets resurfaced soon.™.
In all, a good finish to the week. It feels nice to be back to my normal self, running-wise, after last week’s weirdness.
Looking south across the lake from Phillips Point, post-run.
Stats:
Run 1,027 Average pace: 5:43/km Training status: Maintaining Location: Burnaby Lake (CW) Start: 10:46 a.m. Distance: 5.03 km Time: 28:43 Weather: Mostly sunny Temp: 10-11°C Humidity: 60% Wind: light to moderate BPM: 152 Weight: 168.1 pounds Total distance to date: 6,960 km Devices: Garmin Forerunner 265, Samsung Galaxy S26, AirPods (3rd generation) Shoes: Saucony Peregrine 15 (230/385/615)
Music: Synchronicity, The Police (I didn't even skip "Mother")
View from Cariboo Dam, pre-run: Sunny, with the trees in bloom.
I missed Monday’s run due to phone-related shenanigans (I got a new phone on Monday but the shenanigans were not related to the new phone itself). This meant I had four days off between runs so if nothing else, I’d be well-rested.
I headed to the lake and adopted a slower starting pace to see how I felt. I felt OK, so I increased my pace and went on to keep increasing it, for a rare graph where every km was faster than the one before, with the last one coming in at a spiffy 5:30/km. My overall pace was 5:45/km, much better than last week and while my BPM was up a bit at 150, that’s still perfectly cromulent and expected with the extra exertion and having taken some extra time off.
So it seems whatever hit me last week has moved on, at least for now. Yay. I didn’t experience any issues, the run just felt like a normal run. One young guy (seriously, there are people running on the trail that are probably 40 years younger than me now) passed me wearing a t-shirt that said “10K run division” on the back, so I didn’t feel too bad about him getting ahead. I assumed he’d just keep expanding his lead and disappear ahead of me, but either he slowed down or I sped up as we reached a kind of equillibrium and he stayed ahead but within sight for the rest of the run (he kept going after I hit 5K).
The trail had a decent number of people out and the weather was significantly cooler than Friday’s 17C. 9C was fine for the run and the sun was out much of the time, which felt nice. I’m not sure how much the more seasonal temperature helped today, except that I’m sure it did.
And the new phone–a Samsung Galaxy S26–worked without issue playing music from my AirPods and relaying the laps from my Garmin Forerunner watch. My current gear is a Frankenstein mix-n-match that works surprisingly well together. This pleases me.
Oh, and the water fountain was back in service, hooray! Long enough for me to get one drink from it, then it was locked down again. I am not kidding. By the time I went down to the 0K marker to start my run and ran back past the fountasin, a park worker was there locking it down again, for reasons unknown. They’ll probably open it up again in July.
Before: I got a drink from the fountain. Yummy cool water!After (literally a few minutes later): Locked down again.
Still, In all, it was nice to get back out and return to my normal running ways.
Looking toward the rowing pavilion, post-run.
Stats:
Run 1,026 Average pace: 5:45/km Training status: Maintaining Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW) Start: 11:32 a.m. Distance: 5.03 km Time: 28:52 Weather: Partly sunny Temp: 9°C Humidity: 54% Wind: light to moderate BPM: 150 Weight: 167.9 pounds Total distance to date: 6,955 km Devices: Garmin Forerunner 265, Samsung Galaxy S26, AirPods (3rd generation) Shoes: Saucony Peregrine 15 (225/374/598)
I’ve decided to let FooGallery do the heavy lifting for my birding galleries and have collected them all on a page here using their Album feature to group them all: Birding Galleries. The link on the right sidebar has been updated as well.
I’ll go back and tweak and add more galleries as time and motivation permits.
Where: Reifel Bird Sanctuary (Delta), Tlahutum Regional Park (Coquitlam), Burnaby Lake (Burnaby) Weather: Cloudy, 13°C
I was feeling weird and tired in the morning, so I missed the entire Reifel section of birding today.
Reifel Bird Sanctuary
Nic saw a bunch of Snow Geese, some White-fronted Geese hanging with them, and the Killdeer still protecting their parking lot nest. The babbies are expected to hatch soon.
I have no photos from Reifel, so you’ll have to use your imagination.
Tlahutum Regional Park
Coquitlam River, cropped to 16:9.
We both went to Tlahutum and spoiler: no Mountain Bluebirds, but we did see a somewhat elusive Cinnamon Teal for the first time this season at the big pond, where all the cool birds were hanging out, ranging from Buffleheads to Gadwalls and shovelers.
We opted to skip the community garden, though we could see the flooded bits are starting to dry out. Soon™.
The bulk of the trails proved fairly quiet, with only a few Golden-crowned Sparrows and some crows, but not a lot else. Maybe birds like the sun, because it remained overcast the entire afternoon (though it did not shower, as the forecast had threatened).
The other highlight came when we took a path different from the usual on the way back to the car and came across, of all things, a Bewick’s Wren having a grand old time taking a dirt bath right in the middle of the trail. We took photos until it was done and flew off. It was very into the dirt bath.
In all, though, a quiet outing here today.
Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake Regional Park
Burnaby Lake was windswpt and cool today.
By the time we got to Piper Spit, the wind had picked up and it felt a bit cool, a big shift from the last few days of summer-like weather.
While the lake level was lower, meaning more of the land mass is now above water, it was still too deep around the spit for shorebirds. Most of the usual gang were otherwise represented, including a single Glaucous-winged Gull, perhaps selected to check the status of the golf balls the gulls have collected there.
The coots seemed to be split into two groups: the clean-billed and the dirty-billed. The dirty-billed had black…stuff…along their “lips”. I have no idea what it signifies. Maybe we have two rival coot gangs and the coot war is coming.
A lot of the birds we saw today were looking scruffy, due to moulting, and among them were some Green-winged Teals who looked a bit like unfinished paintings, with their heads flecked with green instead of lovingly smothered in it.
The drama here was kept to a minimum, though the geese were still being geese. You can’t fight your nature.
I have still not gotten a decent photo of a cowbird yet.
And we saw a pigeon couple kissing and kissing and kissing some more. Another male, meanwhile, was trying and failing to impress the ladies again.
We ended with a stop at the butterfly garden, which is still absent of butterflies, but did have a Goldenrod Crab Spider tucked inside a tulip, its front legs spread out, ready to give a deadly hug to any early pollinators. The one we saw was an almost translucent white, though they can change colour to match their surroundings. How sneaky!
The weather was better than forecast, but it was still very gray. I guess it makes the motre colourful birds pop, so there is that. In all, a nice bit of afternoon birding.
The Shots
Shot with a Canon EOS R7 with 18-150 mm kit lens and 100-400 mm telephoto.
A few shots, gallery pending:
When you got an itch, you gotta scratch.The first Cinnamon Teal we’ve seen this year.A Golden-crowned Sparrow looking contemplative.This Bewick’s Wren was enjoying a nice dirth bath.A Goldenrod Crab Spider waiting to give a pollinator a fatal hug.
As I’ve mentioned before, I have an iPhone 12 I bought in January 2021, making it now a little over five years old. This is the longest I’ve ever had a phone that didn’t plug into a wall outlet.
But late last year it started exhibiting an annoying issue (that also had an unintended perk as a side effect): It stopped passing through phone calls.
I can make calls the same as always, but when someone calls me, they get sent directly to voicemail. Often, I don’t even get a notification that a call has happened. If my phone does ring, the caller gets sent to VM while I stare at a not-actually-happening call where the time on the call never advances past 0:00.
The perk is it saves me from ever having to take a call, which is nice in a 1990s-no-cellphone kind of way.
But it is not helpful when someone, like a doctor, needs to call me.
I tried various ways of fixing the issue, but always felt it was likely bad hardware. I’d resisted two final fixes:
Updating to iOS 26
Doing a full erase and reset of the phone
I’d already ruled out the second option, because I’d just rather get a new phone at that point, and I’d resisted the first option because I deeply dislike the look of “Liquid Glass” and the bugs and weird, unwelcome changes made in iOS 26.
But then I thought, it’s up to 26.4.1 now, and I knew all the steps to take to tamp down the (IMO) ugly look of the new UI design, so I went ahead and updated.
It made no difference. The phone is still broken.
But so I’m not just griping, as fun as it is, here are the steps I took to minimize the look of Liquid Glass, with most of these settings found, logically, in the Settings app:
Under Display, I changed Liquid Glass from Clear to Tinted
Under Accessibility:
Display and Tex Size: Turn on Reduce Transparency
Motion: Turn on Reduce Motion (this one is essential to cutting down the insane bounciness they added to everything)
Lock Screen > Customize: Set the clock from Glass to Solid
This mostly reduces the home screen and other app pages to looking like before, except with the weird glassy outlines on icons, which look terrible and you can do nothing about. This also doesn’t affect the awful choices Apple made in its native apps, like Apple Music, an app that was already pretty clunky and now is somehow even worse. But it’s mostly tolerable after making these adjustments.
View from Cariboo Dam: Sunny and once again weirdly warm.
The stats and conditions for today’s run were remarkably similar to Monday’s (I did not run Wednesday because my Garmin watch recommended a rest day), but the title of the post still makes sense, because while Monday felt like a horrible slog, today’s near-identical pace was a more deliberate choice and my performance was pretty steady throughout, with a slightly faster start and finish.
I’m still not entirely sure what is dragging my performance down this week. It may be a combination of things:
Spring allergies
Maybe a virus of some kind?
Probably not Spring Fever
Definitely not Boogie Fever
The much higher-than-normal temperatures could be a factor
Speaking of, it was 17C for the run. The normal daily high this time of year is 12C, to give you an idea of how much warmer it was. Humidity was 50% and while I didn’t experience DMS1Dry Mouth Syndrome I could sense it beckoning. I did a short loop today and didn’t experience any issues, nothing at all like Monday. I was slower, but didn’t struggle, because the slowness was more a choice.
I saw one guy jogging with a jacket. I almost started sweating spontaneously just looking at it. Seriously, you do not need a jacket when it is sunny and 17C, unless you have, I dunno, translucent skin or something. Maybe he did.
In all, not a stellar week for running (other than the great early summer-like weather), but I got through it.
Sun shining on forested area just past the end of the run.
Stats:
Run 1,025 Average pace: 5:54/km Training status: Maintaining Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW, short loop) Start: 11:32 a.m. Distance: 5.03 km Time: 29:39 Weather: Sunny Temp: 17°C Humidity: 50% Wind: light BPM: 147 Weight: 167.1 pounds Total distance to date: 6,950 km Devices: Garmin Forerunner 265, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation) Shoes: Saucony Peregrine 15 (220/360/580)
