Birding

Where: Reifel Bird Sanctuary (Delta), Burnaby Lake (Burnaby)
Weather: Cloudy, some sun, 11-16°C

Reifel Bird Sanctuary

The weather was downright pleasant today. Nic wore shorts! I did not. Maybe next time the weather is nice.

We got to Reifel early and given the weather, it was pretty busy. Among the many people was local bird photographer Liron Gertsman, who I recognized as he and his groupies/friends walked past up and went to the top of the viewing tower. I spotted him due to his adorable baby beard. He probably won several awards while at the top of the tower for photography, these things just seem to happen to him.

Meanwhile, on the ground, we saw a good mix of birds. The shoveller numbers seem to be thinning, but we encountered many a YARG (Yet Another Random Goose) as they were scattered all over the place.

The tree swallows are back, looking like shiny little penguins and setting up home in assorted bird boxes. Marsh wrens were singing their little hearts out and a few of them appeared long enough for us to get some decent shots. The even harder-to-shoot golden-crowned kinglets were also flitting about and amazingly, several stopped long enough to make up for the hundred or so blurry or not-quite-there shots. It’s always nice to be reviewing your photos and encounter a good shot only a few photos in.

We saw two Sandhill cranes, though they were apart–one adult and one rather vocal juvenile. I wonder why the family is split up.

The drama this time came courtesy of a cantankerous coot, who took umbrage to a duck, stretched up to full height (and looking very chicken-like) and doing a kind of karate kick with one of its impressively freaky feet to a nearby mallard. It ended after that, but yeah, don’t mess with coots, I guess.

The geese were relatively well-behaved, and all of the ducks gave us good pose.

Burnaby Lake

We weren’t at Burnaby Lake for too long for reasons, but the main objective–to find recently-sighted mountain bluebirds–eluded us. Instead, we came across a large murder of geese (that’s what I’m calling them) on the athletic field, except, upon closer inspection with both eyes and ears, these were not Canada geese, but the smaller and honk-free Cackling geese. We’d never seen a large group of them before. They’re kind of adorable with their short necks and stubbier beaks. And they don’t honk, they kind of peep-honk (it doesn’t sound like cackling to me).

There were chickadees here, too, but they were one of the birbs I failed to get any really good shots of today, alas. It was a fine outing otherwise.

The Shots

Theoretically possible

The Birds (and other critters)

Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:

• American robin
• Black-capped chickadee
• Dark-eyed Junco
• European starling
• Golden-crowned kinglet
• Golden-crowned sparrow
• House sparrow
• Marsh wren
• Red-winged blackbird
• Rufous hummingbird
• Song sparrow
• Spotted towhee
• Tree swallow
• White-crowned sparrow

Waterfowl and shorebirds:

• American coot
• American wigeon
• Bufflehead
• Cackling goose
• Canada goose
• Great blue heron
• Green-winged teal
• Hooded merganser
• Mallard
• Northern pintail
• Northern shoveller
• Ring-necked duck
• Sandhill crane
• Scaup
• Wood duck

Common:

• American crow
• Assorted gulls
• A rock pigeon

Raptors:

• Bald eagle
• Northern harrier (maybe?)

Non-birds:

• Turtles on a log
• One chonky black squirrel

Where: Reifel Bird Sanctuary (Delta), Everett Crowley Park (Vancouver), Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake (Burnaby)
Weather: Sun and high cloud, 7-14°C

The Outing

Reifel Bird Sanctuary

I missed the snow at Reifel in the sense that I was not there when the snow was. I did not otherwise miss it. Today it was mostly sunny and quite mild, with temperatures well above normal and little to no wind.

We didn’t have to go far to find the Sandhill cranes, as three of them milled around us right at the entrance. A sad note here, as one of the nearly adult-size babbies disappeared a few weeks and has not been seen, despite park volunteers looking for it, or signs of it. The others were wandering about in that nonchalant way of theirs. We also had our best view of the night heron, which was still not great.

The great blue heron were mostly seen from a distance, and one of their usual spots in the slough near the entrance had been taken over by the largest gathering of turtles I’ve seen there, spread out among the logs and basking in the sun.

After shooting the cranes, we headed up the East Dyke trail and saw a large blob of people ahead, gathered in the area where owls have been spotted. They had spotted an owl, specifically an adorable little Northern saw-whet owl (less adorable if you’re a vole or field mouse). Even better, I got probably my best owl shots ever, which is admittedly not a high bar, since almost all of my previous shots ranged from bad to “I swear there’s an owl there.”

Chickadees were in short supply, which seemed odd, but we did see a few wood ducks, the geese had returned and honked regularly to remind you they had done so. Towhees were once again out in large numbers. No sign of any spring migrants yet.

And eagles. Everywhere we saw eagles, flying in circles in groups of about six to eight, all over the place. Maybe a social thing? It was a good way to test the strength of my arms, as to get shots I had to point the camera straight up at the sky. The shots I got were okay, but Nic fared a bit better.

I got my first-ever shots of a trio of hummingbirds at one feeder, all drinking instead of fighting. Some of the shots were pretty decent, woo.

Reifel was also quite busy, which was not surprising given how mild it was. Overall, it felt like we moved through more quickly than usual, but we both got good shots, so that was OK.

Everett Crowley Park

This was a new place for us and a rare bit of birding in Vancouver proper. The park is nice enough and has nice, wide trails and a cute little pond called Avalon Pond, where we saw a few mallards. However, many of the trails are off-leash for dogs and this is obviously a very popular spot for dog walkers, which is not great for birding, as birds and dogs do not normally act like best buds together. We did see a junco and a few robins, and one song sparrow. BUT…one of the robins was leucistic up in the hizzy, with a lot of white all over parts of its body that are normally not white, giving it a distinctive and snazzy look. This pretty much made the trip worthwhile. That said, we probably won’t come back, due to the dogs.

There were signs noting that No nuisance barking was allowed. I wonder where the line is between acceptable and nuisance barking is?

Also, it doesn’t state who shouldn’t dig, so I assume the rule applies to both dogs and people. Several large holes indicated this rule was not always being observed.

Piper Spit

The sun had mostly disappeared between high clouds at Piper Spit, which made us sad, and our trip to the rowing pavilion yielded no birds other than pigeons, though we did get some scenery shots.

At the spit itself, the usual gang was there, including a gull that was very proud of the golf ball it had procured. There was duck drama, but the coots seemed relatively well-behaved. The geese were honking and being weird and one on the pier got nippy, and also started showing its tongue, which is something you should never see or ever want to see.

In good news, the dowitchers were back. In less good news, they were on the west side of the pier, which is bad from a lighting perspective. Nothing some post-processing magic can’t fix, I suppose.

There were also quite a few people here, many holding out their hands to feed the blackbirds and one person bravely risking all of her fingers by letting a goose eat from her hand. I would only do this while wearing industrial gloves. And a welding mask.

In all, a nice mix of old and new, with perfectly pleasant weather that beat the ice and snow of our last outing a few weeks back.

The Shots

Soon?™

The Birds (and other critters). Rare or rarely-seen birds highlighted in bold.

Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:

• American robin
• Anna’s hummingbird
• Black-capped chickadee
• Dark-eyed Junco
• Fox sparrow
• Golden-crowned sparrow
• Red-winged blackbird
• Song sparrow
• Spotted towhee

Waterfowl and shorebirds:

• American coot
• American wigeon
• Black-crowned night heron
• Canada goose
• Common merganser
• Great blue heron
• Green-winged teal
• Hooded merganser
• Mallard
• Northern pintail
• Northern shoveller
• Ring-necked duck
• Sandhill crane
• Scaup
• Wood duck

Common:

• American crow
• Assorted gulls
• Rock pigeon

Raptors:

• Bald eagles and plenty of ’em
• Northern saw-whet owl

Non-birds:

• A few squirrels
• Approximately one million turtles
• Lots of dogs, but none that were nuisance barking

It was a chilly but tolerable day of birding, thanks to little breeze, though it started getting a wee bit nippy toward the end at Piper Spit.

Where: Reifel Bird Sanctuary (Delta), Burnaby Lake Regional Park (Burnaby)
Weather: Mostly sunny, 3-5°C

The Outing

Reifel Bird Sanctuary

We started out a tad later than usual, thanks to my second-to-last IV therapy. Because my morning routine got disrupted, I also forgot to change into my trail runners for the outing, but my feet survived.

The parking lot was packed. There were people everywhere. There were chickadees everywhere. We started off by having an Anna’s hummingbird sit on a wire fence and pose in front of us, then got to mix and mingle up close with the Sandhill crane family (two adults, two kids, strutting around like dinosaurs of yore).

The east dyke provided a rare glimpse of a saw-whet owl, but it was all tucked in and hard to see. The first bird blind had a heron standing on a log right outside it, though, affording some nice backlit shots.

As mentioned, chickadees were flitting all over the place, but also a lot of towhees, perhaps being bolder due to the colder temperatures and scarcer food supplies.

The main pond was largely empty and the entire area was absent of all wood ducks and geese. Some geese were seen outside the sanctuary in nearby fields. I wonder if they don’t like mingling with the winter migrants. Maybe the shovelers scare them.

Many of the smaller ponds had thin layers of ice and I saw a few ducks landing, but they all proved fairly coordinated, so no slapstick opportunities to be had.

I managed to take photos with the IV in my arm, but my good-to-bad ratio is way off. I’m probably being a bit of a dope, since I’m not used to the camera, plus I was trying to be extra careful in how I loved my right arm. Anyway, I got some good shots, at least.

Piper Spit

There were also people a-plenty at Piper Spit and by later in the afternoon, a bit of a breeze was picking up, so it was cooler, too, but not Fonzie cool¹Kids, ask your parents. Or maybe even grandparents at this point.. The land mass seemed to be occupied mostly by crows and gulls. There were geese here, but not many, and they kept relatively quiet. Always unnerving.

Blackbirds were all over the place and the waterfowl were getting regular handfuls of seed, which makes it easy to get chaos shots of dozens of birds thrashing about, but less so for the “gliding serenely along the water by itself” ones. Most of the winter birds were accounted for. My best shot was probably one of a regular ol’ crow. But it was a nice shot.

We opted to not check the Butterfly Garden since it is currently bereft of butterflies or any real garden. Maybe in a few months!

We’ll see how the next outing goes. The last few have felt a bit weird due to various technology or health issues, not to mention the regularity has been very irregular due to bad weather and things. There might be a little SAD thrown in, too, though it was mainly sunny for the day, which was spiffy. But it was still nice to get out!

The Shots

Soon™

The Birds (and other critters). Rare or rarely-seen birds highlighted in bold.

Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:

• Anna’s hummingbird
• Black-capped chickadee
• Dark-eyed junco
• Golden-crowned sparrow
• House sparrow
• Red-winged blackbird
• Song sparrow
• Spotted towhee
• Woodpecker (possibly a Downy, we couldn’t see its head)

Waterfowl and shorebirds:

• American coot
• American wigeon
• Bufflehead
• Canada goose
• Common merganser
• Double-crested cormorant
• Gadwall
• Great blue heron
• Green-winged teal
• Hooded merganser
• Long-billed dowitcher
• Mallard
• Northern pintail
• Northern shoveler
• Pied-billed (?) grebe
• Ring-necked duck
• Sandhill crane
• Scaup
• Trumpeter swan
• Wood duck

Common:

• American crow
• Assorted gulls
• Rock pigeon

Raptors:

• Bald eagle
• Northern harrier
• Northern saw-whet owl
• Northern shrike

Non-birds:

• A gray and a black squirrel