Where: Reifel Bird Sanctuary (Delta), Everett Crowley Park (Vancouver), Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake (Burnaby)
Weather: Sun and high cloud, 7-14°C
The Outing
Reifel Bird Sanctuary
I missed the snow at Reifel in the sense that I was not there when the snow was. I did not otherwise miss it. Today it was mostly sunny and quite mild, with temperatures well above normal and little to no wind.
We didn’t have to go far to find the Sandhill cranes, as three of them milled around us right at the entrance. A sad note here, as one of the nearly adult-size babbies disappeared a few weeks and has not been seen, despite park volunteers looking for it, or signs of it. The others were wandering about in that nonchalant way of theirs. We also had our best view of the night heron, which was still not great.
The great blue heron were mostly seen from a distance, and one of their usual spots in the slough near the entrance had been taken over by the largest gathering of turtles I’ve seen there, spread out among the logs and basking in the sun.
After shooting the cranes, we headed up the East Dyke trail and saw a large blob of people ahead, gathered in the area where owls have been spotted. They had spotted an owl, specifically an adorable little Northern saw-whet owl (less adorable if you’re a vole or field mouse). Even better, I got probably my best owl shots ever, which is admittedly not a high bar, since almost all of my previous shots ranged from bad to “I swear there’s an owl there.”
Chickadees were in short supply, which seemed odd, but we did see a few wood ducks, the geese had returned and honked regularly to remind you they had done so. Towhees were once again out in large numbers. No sign of any spring migrants yet.
And eagles. Everywhere we saw eagles, flying in circles in groups of about six to eight, all over the place. Maybe a social thing? It was a good way to test the strength of my arms, as to get shots I had to point the camera straight up at the sky. The shots I got were okay, but Nic fared a bit better.
I got my first-ever shots of a trio of hummingbirds at one feeder, all drinking instead of fighting. Some of the shots were pretty decent, woo.
Reifel was also quite busy, which was not surprising given how mild it was. Overall, it felt like we moved through more quickly than usual, but we both got good shots, so that was OK.
Everett Crowley Park
This was a new place for us and a rare bit of birding in Vancouver proper. The park is nice enough and has nice, wide trails and a cute little pond called Avalon Pond, where we saw a few mallards. However, many of the trails are off-leash for dogs and this is obviously a very popular spot for dog walkers, which is not great for birding, as birds and dogs do not normally act like best buds together. We did see a junco and a few robins, and one song sparrow. BUT…one of the robins was leucistic up in the hizzy, with a lot of white all over parts of its body that are normally not white, giving it a distinctive and snazzy look. This pretty much made the trip worthwhile. That said, we probably won’t come back, due to the dogs.
There were signs noting that No nuisance barking was allowed. I wonder where the line is between acceptable and nuisance barking is?
Also, it doesn’t state who shouldn’t dig, so I assume the rule applies to both dogs and people. Several large holes indicated this rule was not always being observed.
Piper Spit
The sun had mostly disappeared between high clouds at Piper Spit, which made us sad, and our trip to the rowing pavilion yielded no birds other than pigeons, though we did get some scenery shots.
At the spit itself, the usual gang was there, including a gull that was very proud of the golf ball it had procured. There was duck drama, but the coots seemed relatively well-behaved. The geese were honking and being weird and one on the pier got nippy, and also started showing its tongue, which is something you should never see or ever want to see.
In good news, the dowitchers were back. In less good news, they were on the west side of the pier, which is bad from a lighting perspective. Nothing some post-processing magic can’t fix, I suppose.
There were also quite a few people here, many holding out their hands to feed the blackbirds and one person bravely risking all of her fingers by letting a goose eat from her hand. I would only do this while wearing industrial gloves. And a welding mask.
In all, a nice mix of old and new, with perfectly pleasant weather that beat the ice and snow of our last outing a few weeks back.
The Shots
Soon?™
The Birds (and other critters). Rare or rarely-seen birds highlighted in bold.
Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:
- American robin
- Anna’s hummingbird
- Black-capped chickadee
- Dark-eyed Junco
- Fox sparrow
- Golden-crowned sparrow
- Red-winged blackbird
- Song sparrow
- Spotted towhee
Waterfowl and shorebirds:
- American coot
- American wigeon
- Black-crowned night heron
- Canada goose
- Common merganser
- Great blue heron
- Green-winged teal
- Hooded merganser
- Mallard
- Northern pintail
- Northern shoveller
- Ring-necked duck
- Sandhill crane
- Scaup
- Wood duck
Common:
- American crow
- Assorted gulls
- Rock pigeon
Raptors:
- Bald eagles and plenty of ’em
- Northern saw-whet owl
Non-birds:
- A few squirrels
- Approximately one million turtles
- Lots of dogs, but none that were nuisance barking
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