A walk through the plaguelands. Er, park

Nic and I went for a stroll around the southern half of Burnaby Lake today, taking pictures, enjoying nature and, of course, avoiding people.

The weather was mild, but cloudy and this probably scared a few people off. The majority of those on the trail seemed to be mindful to keep the 2 meters away, or at least as best they could manage, as much of the trail isn’t even 2 meters wide. There were a few dopes, of course, and a surprisingly large number of cyclists. The entrance to the park had a giant sandwich board in place basically saying TAKE YOUR BIKE ELSEWHERE. YES, YOU. But a lot of people are clearly ignoring these signs, perhaps because they think there is no enforcement right now–which may be true, as I did not see any park people or vehicles.

I did see greenery, water and ducks, some of which are below.

First, the standard shot of Burnaby Lake, taken from the bridge at Deer Lake Brook. You can see the baby lily pads popping up all over, as well as the general greenery filling in along the shore.

Next is the little pond adjacent to the lake with a partially sunken log that is popular with ducks. The pond is smaller than usual as we haven’t had much rain for a few months. But the ducks were still there.

This pond is nearby to the other one and nicely captures the fact that the area around the lake is marshland.

And there were a number of these signs dotting the sides of the trail reminding us that we live in COVID times. As I said above, people were generally pretty good about not getting elbow to elbow, though there’s always a few dingbats out and aboot.

Nic was using his telephoto lens to capture amazing shots of birds. Meanwhile I managed this with my iPhone 8:

If I crop as much as I dare, you can see this:

It’s not great, but at least you can tell they are birds. They preened for a bit, then took off, probably because we were standing there staring at them.

Overall, it was a nice outing and the cloudy weather likely worked to our benefit, keeping crowds down. It would have been great running weather, so I may vow yet again to try next weekend to get off the treadmill and into nature and all that.

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