Where: Rocky Point Park, Old Orchard Park, Inlet Park, Old Mill Site Park (Port Moody)
Weather: Sunny, 27-28°C
The Outing
While it looks like we covered all of Port Moody’s parks, these are all clustered along the north shore of Burrard Inlet along a several km stretch, so it’s actually quite compact. Handy, considering the unusually high heat.
Due to my annoyingly slow recovery from my current cold, I passed on the early part of the birding in Pitt Meadows, but it was mostly out in the open under a cruel sun (ie. hot), though pretty, based on Nic’s pics (plus my recollection of being there last summer). Nic’s quest to see a Bullock’s Oriole paid off, and he didn’t even know it until he was looking at his photos later, which is like getting just the prize you wanted in the bottom of the Cracker Jack box1I dimly recall the prizes being small, plastic and unremarkable, so a Bullock’s Oriole is even better. He also saw a red-winged blackbird with a white tail, which is decidedly weird, as well as cliff swallows tending to their nests, which are reminiscent of something you’d have H.R. Giger design for an Alien film (the nests, not the swallows).
I joined in the next stage of the quest in mid-afternoon: To find the heron rookery at Rocky Point Park before all the baby herons left their nests. We were aided in several ways:
- Helpful signs on the path saying, “You’re in a heron colony, be quiet, you clumsy loud human!”
- Some directions given to us weeks ago by people who knew of the rookery when we were last at Rocky Point.
It turns out the directions were off probably by a factor of two and the heron nests, which they said would be at or near eye-level, were only at eye level if you were 10–20 metres tall. Which I am not.
But after wandering the lower trail several times (twisty, dirt-packed and filled with enough exposed tree roots to give me PTSD), we opted to try the path higher up, which is paved, civilized and also available for cyclists. This gave us the vantage point we needed, and we saw plenty of nests up (way up) in the trees. Yay! Most of them were empty. Boo. The ones that weren’t had nearly full-grown herons, so we totally missed on the goofy baby dinosaur stage of development. But we will know where to look during the next nesting season.
Although we did see more birds than we normally do at Rocky Point, there still weren’t a lot, and most of my shots were mediocreat best. Even my scenery shots taken with the camera were crooked (I fare much better with the camera than the phone). I blame everything on my cold. At least I never coughed while taking a photo, though that might have at least looked artsy.
The Shots
Soon™
The Birds (and other critters). Rare or rarely-seen birds highlighted in bold. I have ommitted birds from the Nic-exclusive part of the birding, otherwise the list would have been much longer and more interesting.
Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:
- American robin
- Northern flicker
- Song sparrow
- Spotted towhee
Waterfowl and shorebirds:
- Canada goose
- Great blue heron
- Mallard
Common:
- American crow
- European starling
Raptors:
- None
Non-birds:
- None that I noticed. Maybe some bees?
