Birding, September 19, 2026: Birthday birds and freaky insects

Where: Reifel Bird Sanctuary, Centennial Beach (Delta), Tlahutum Regional Park (Coquitlam)
Weather: Mostly sunny, 18–21°C

It was my birthday and what better way to celebrate than going out and getting lightly sun burnt while watching freaky insects and pooping birds?

Reifel Bird Sanctuary

We started at Reifel and were immediately rewarded with multiple Anna’s Hummingbirds darting to and fro around the feeders, which were bathed in very nice sunlight. There was also a plethora of shorebirds in the main pond by the entrance.

Also by the entrance, around the warming hut and gift shoo: a whole bunch of spiders. I’ve never seen so many. What do they know that we don’t?

The London Slough, normally ringed by herons, was now full of shorebirds, standing in lines on the logs, mixed in with geese, ducks, and turtles. Why can’t we all just chill out and hang out on logs together like that?

The eastern dyke trail gave us our best shots of chickadees, though we did see them flitting about in other areas. We also caught a roving band of American Bushtits, but alas, I was not able to get any shots good enough to post other than to prove they were there.

And we saw coots. They are back, with their glorious feet and cooty ways.

We saw goose drama, of course, but the Sandhill Cranes were off elsewhere. Making up for their absence was a rare sighting of a Barred Owl, snoozing away in a tree just off of one of the bird blinds. Neat! I’m not sure they still exist, though. Maybe it was a group hallucination.

And the trails have been mostly repaired now, so no more navigating lumpy rocks, it’s also fine gravel or cushiony loam.

Centennial Beach

Whatever was happening at Centennial Beach was not happening this time, so parking was easy. We saw a Northern Shoveller at the pond. Their numbers should start increasing significantly soon.

The tide was in, so we did not see much in the way of shorebirds, apart from some distant Killdeer and the like. If you count Canada Geese as shorebirds, then we saw plenty, as they were colonizing a peninsula not far off the shore.

The highlight, strange as it sounds, was an insect, specifically a praying mantis, which I’ve never seen in person before. It started by Nic nearly stepping on it, as it plopped right down on the trail, seemingly oblivious to us. At first I thought it was a walking stick, but no, it was a praying mantis in all its freaky glory.

It was very graceless, appearing to have trouble both flying and walking. The flying was a series of short belly hops, the walking was like, “These legs are not made for this.” Kind of strange. We took many photos, then left it to hopefully find some way off the trail.

Tlahutum Regional Park

A different view of the Coquitlam River.

We ended at Tlahutum, but birds were hard to come by, for some reason. We did see a few sparrows, but most seemed tucked away somewhere. We spotted a Turkey Vulture flying overhead, but it was very high up. And there was a crow that was molting so conspicuously around its head that it looked a bit like a vulture.

This is also where I’m pretty sure I got sunburned. There is essentially no shaded places at Tlahutum.

In all, a fine birthday outing, with some rare sightings, returned migrants and terrifying goose drama.