Where: Van Dusen Botanical Gardens, Deering Island Park (Vancouver), Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake (Burnaby)
Weather: Clouds in morning, clearing in afternoon, 17-24°C
Van Dusen Botanical Gardens
It was cloudy in the morning, so light was sometimes tricksy, especially in the more woody areas, but the Van Dusen Botanical Gardens provided a nice change of pace. There were many exotic plants and birds and rocks and things. There was a waterfall that looked nice and was being sketched/painted by multiple people. You could even climb to the top of it, where the illusion was shattered by a very conspicuous pipe feeding the water to the falls. Oh well.
Birds were not as plentiful, but I did get a good workout on using manual focus on several spiders hanging around (a theme that would prevail throughout the day). We did see some chickadees, flickers and a few others, so it was not a total bust or anything.
We also saw busts–of historical botanists!
Nic defied the odds and managed to find our way out of the hedge maze before the maniac with an axe could get us (seasonal, winter-only). We went to the Heron Pond, but it only had two fake herons. We did not see any real ones the entire day, a sharp contrast to All Herons All The Time last week.
Overall, it was enjoyable to finally check out the place (I’ve lived in the Lower Mainland since 1986 and have never been), even if the birb count was low.
Deering Island Park
After shooting all the spiders, Nic suggested we check out a quaint little place called Deering Island Park. It looks like this in Apple Maps:
Technically we saw a bird or birds, but it was mostly more spiders. But by this time, the sky was clearing up and that meant two things: Better light for when we saw (hopefully) saw birds and sunburn, because neither of us wore sunblock.
The area is a curious mix of horse stables and swanky homes. The sign for the non-official trail near the actual park basically said, “We rich folks will let you, the poors, use this short trail, but don’t do anything funny or unseemly while here because we are just barely tolerating your presence as it is.”
If you keep going past the end of the trail, there is an even more unofficial one that connects to what seems to be a service road to the nearby golf course. In Kerrisdale, there is always a nearby golf course.
Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake
We ended our afternoon at Piper Spit, where we saw actual birds in multiples! Seasonal migrants are still a bit slow to arrive (The weather? Alignment of the planets?) and in some cases we only saw a single representative of a particular species, like what was probably the same coot we saw last time. There was also a single blackbird.
But the lack of new migrants was offset by oodles of dowitchers, who were even closer than normal to the pier, thanks to the ever-more shallow water and a landmass that is now the size of a small town. There were even a few killdeer splashing about. Neat!
In all, it was a pleasant wrap-up to a summer of birding. We’ll see how many more migrants fly in over the next few weeks.
The Shots
Shot with a Canon EOS R7 with 18-150 mm kit lens and 100-400 mm telephoto.
A few shots:
The Birds (and other critters)
Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:
- Anna’s hummingbird
- Bewick’s wren
- Black-capped chickadee
- House sparrow
- Northern flicker
- Red-winged blackbird
- Song sparrow
- Spotted towhee
Waterfowl and shorebirds:
- American coot (One! Again!)
- Blue-winged teal
- Canada goose
- Great blue heron (but fake)
- Green-winged teal
- Hooded merganser
- Killdeer
- Long-billed dowitcher
- Mallard
- Northern shoveller
- Wood duck
Common:
- American crow
- Rock pigeon
- Some gulls (?)
Raptors:
- None
Non-birds:
- Assorted pollinators
- One black squirrel
- A lot of spiders
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