Where: Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake (Burnaby), Tlahutum Regional Park (Coquitlam)
Weather: Cloudy, 11-12°C
It was a relatively brief afternoon of birding, thanks to ever-changing weather conditions. As it turned out, the weather was better than expected, with only a wee bit of drizzle at the start and then the sun even appeared several times.
Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake
We started at Piper Lake, which was unusually busy. Maybe people are feeling claustrophobic staying inside all the time by mid-November, so any non-rainy weather is good enough to get out. Or maybe everything on Netflix sucks right now. Whatever the case, there were plenty of gulls and plenty of people. But none of the people were feeding the birds, so hooray for that.
Speaking of feeding, it’s spawning season, which meant two things:
- The occasional salmon carcass
- Seagulls tending to the above
I took photos.
No new exotic species were on hand, and even the wood ducks seemed relatively scare. The only geese were flying overhead. But we seem to have two semi-new regular groups now:
- Dowitchers hanging out in the shallow/muddy area to the west of the pier (they shift as the water level of the lake rises and falls)
- Cormorants gathered off to the east–close enough to shoot, but not very close
The seagull population has also grown, likely due to the salmon. Maybe seagulls and geese don’t get along, which is why the geese are elsewhere.
In even shorter supply were sparrows and similar birbs. We did see a fair number of song sparrows–or maybe just the same one following us around. But others were much more scarce. Admittedly, we arrived via the Nature House entrance, which meant we had a fairly small area for seeing birbs.
Teals, mallards and coots were well-represented, with two coots swapping out their usual drama for some gentle affection. Probably followed later by drama.
Tlahutum Regional Park
We got a window of golden hour shots here, when the sky cleared enough for the sun to poke out for several minutes. This gave us some fairly snazzy landscape shots. By the time we were leaving, it was back to gray, dim, and getting dimmer.
In the air, we saw little, other than crows and a juvenile bald eagle way up yonder. In the water, we fared better, with a group of common mergansers in the river (where we’ve seen them before), and the main pond had an assortment of shovellers, gadwalls and a trans-dimensional grebe.
I say this because the grebe was fairly close to us–a rarity to begin with–but before either of us could line up a shot, it dove. I observed its direction and speed, and made a rough calculation on where it would surface. It did not appear in that spot. Nor did it appear in any other spot. It just vanished, apparently, gone through the portal back to the grebeverse, denying us a single shot. Perhaps to compensate, a coot came up close to provide a few glamour shots, coot-style.
In all, a fine afternoon out, especially given the original forecast.
The Shots
Shot with a Canon EOS R7 with 18-150 mm kit lens and 100-400 mm telephoto.
Soon™.
The Birds (and other critters)
Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:
- Dark-eyed Junco
- Red-winged Blackbird
- Ruby-crowned Kinglet
- Song Sparrow
Waterfowl and shorebirds:
- American Coot
- Canada Goose
- Common Merganser
- Double-crested Cormorant
- Gadwall
- Great Blue Heron
- Green-winged Teal
- Long-billed Dowitcher
- Mallard
- Northern Pintail
- Northern Shoveller
- Pied-billed Grebe
- Wood Duck
Common:
- American Crow
- Assorted gulls
- Rock Pigeon
Raptors:
- Bald Eagle
Non-birds:
- Several ex-salmon
- A single fuzzy caterpillar
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