Where: Maplewood Flats (North Vancouver), Burnaby Lake (Burnaby), Tlahutum Regional Park (Coquitlam)
Weather: Mostly cloudy, some drizzle, 20°C
The alliteration will stop when it gets too terrible even for me.
Maplewood Flats
The weather was looking iffy, but we braved not the weather, but traffic, to get to Maplewood Flats (which actually has a big ol’ hill in the middle of it). It was cloudy, but otherwise fine. We saw some bushtits and they were fantastically difficult to capture, as always, along with some mallards, one brooding heron, some gulls and not much else. The scenery was nice and the inlet smelled especially briny, perfect for people who want to “touch ocean.”
Burnaby Lake
We opted to skip Piper Spit, where no doubt people were hauling giant bags of seed to the pier and shovelling it all into the water. Instead, we did a bridge to bridge walk, starting at Still Creek and going to Deer Lake Brook. Along the way we saw mallards, wood ducks (and youngsters), a rare sighting of a Swainson’s thrush, about a million Canada geese claiming the sports fields, and lots of very pretty scenery. The weather continued to hold, with a very occasional bit of drizzle here and there. The park was busier than I expected, given the weather. Maybe Netflix has finally raised its prices too much.
A person at the rowing club said they’d seen a beaver and indeed, we saw the head of a muskrat or beaver as it swam down Still Creek. I am not expert enough to identify by the back of a head at distance, so I’m going to claim it was a beaver. Maybe THE beaver.
Tlahutum Regional Park
We ended the afternoon at Tlahutum, but opted to focus solely on the target-rich environment of the community garden. There, it was almost exclusively young birds, looking all spotted and scruffy and getting out there in the world. Robins dominated, though there were lots of house finches as well. We also saw a fair number of hummingbirds, some white-crowns and towhees. Bumblebees were out in numbers and as always, red soldier beetles were getting it on.
Nic once again demonstrated his ability to scare off birds by either getting too close (I declared I have better BirdSense™ than he does and stand by that) or by pointing at them. I always felt his pointing reminded me of something and I finally figured out what it was:
I mean, if I was a young robin, I’d book it, too.
I actually got some very nice shots of the beetles and hummingbirds, so I was pleased. We opted not to take our chances any further as by this time it was starting to sprinkle lightly, but it was still a bounty of birding.
The Shots
All photos shot with a Canon EOS R7 with 18–150 mm kit lens and 100–400 mm telephoto unless otherwise noted.
The Birds (and other critters)
Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:
- American Bushtit
- American Goldfinch
- American Robin
- Anna’s Hummingbird
- Black-capped Chickadee
- Brown-headed Cowbird
- Eastern Kingbird
- House Finch
- Song Sparrow
- Spotted Towhee
- Swainson’s Thrush
- Tree Swallow
- White-crowned Sparrow
- Willow Flycatcher
Waterfowl and shorebirds:
- Belted Kingfisher
- Canada Goose
- Great Blue Heron
- Mallard
- Wood Duck
Common:
- American Crow
- Rock Pigeon
- Various seagulls
Raptors:
- None
Non-birds:
- Assorted pollinators
- Other naughty bugs
- A lone black squirrel