Birding

Where: Green Timbers Urban Forest Park (Surrey), Blackie Spit/Crescent Beach (Surrey), Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake (Burnaby)
Weather: Sunny, 5-10°C

The Outing

Saturday birding was replaced with kooky Friday birding, due to what looked like better weather on Friday. The weather was indeed sunny, though it cooled noticeably once the sun began to dip (more on that below).

The other downside of weekday birding is rush hour traffic, which caught us multiple times.

But we started out relatively early and in a new location–Green Timbers Urban Forest Park. It lived up to its name, with both green and timbers being present. And it started out with wacky hijinks. Instead of going immediately to the lake, we went to a small foot bridge that connected a smaller pond to the lake to take some shots there. Nic took the cap off his telephoto lens and then, as if for comic effect, it dropped onto the bridge, landed on its edge and rolled just enough to go over the edge.

It didn’t land in the water, but was unreachable without clambering down. Which Nic did. Lens cap secured, we moved on.

We focused mainly on the area around Green Timbers Lake, a pretty if petite body of water as seen below. The east side of the trail hugs the lake, affording us good views. The trail arcs wider on the west and the adjacent area to the lake there is fenced off, so all the more exotic birds were hanging out there. And by exotic, I mean a heron, a fair number of cormorants, and some buffleheads. On the east side, where the people were feeding ducks, despite signs saying not to, were, well, ducks. And plenty of ’em.

We also saw a sign (sadly, I did not take a photo of it) warning of Deep Water Thin Ice, which Nic thinks would make for an awesome album title by some goth band, so I record it here for posterity.

On the trail west of the lake and on and around a large concrete block (?) someone had sprinkled a lot of seed, which was attracting chickadees, towhees, a squirrel and multiple Steller’s jays. We have been seeing them all over lately, and I have no idea why. They are fabulous, so this is quite welcome.

We decided to round out our trip there by going to the Surrey Nature Centre and checking out something called the Big Hill. I was intrigued because Surrey generally doesn’t have many hills, especially big ones. Curiously, the sign directing us down the trail for the 20-minute walk to the Nature Centre dumped us on a road with no indication of where to go next (just down the street a short way, as it turned out). We chatted with a nice park worker there, who informed us of a red-tailed hawk that sometimes flies over the area (she correctly surmised that two guys with cameras bearing telephoto lenses were birders and not, like, peeping toms). We did not see the hawk, but the worker did point out the Big Hill to us. I have included a shot of it below, with arrows to better identify it. It’s big if you are very small. I mean, I’m not saying I was unimpressed, but I walk up a bigger hill just to go to the local grocery store.

After wrapping up at Green Timbers, we moved on to Blackie Spit, which is wonderfully quiet during the week.

We headed out to the spit first, though a new(ish) sign indicated not to go all the way out due to birds. But even as we contemplated the sign, we saw a heron land not far away and in an area we don’t normally see them. Then another heron landed not too far from the first one. Then there was heron drama. After, only one heron remained. I mean, they didn’t battle to the death or anything, one just chased the other away.

We saw more herons in their usual locale in the marshy area to the south. We also saw large numbers of wigeons–including Eurasian wigeons, which we don’t see often–as well as wood ducks, mallards and northern pintails. The tide was in, so shorebirds like yellowlegs and dowitchers were not to be seen. We did see a kingfisher, though.

And we saw loons. We have seen loons here before, but this time they were kind enough to be closer to the shore, so I finally got decent shots of them, rather than my usual “you can tell by its shape that it’s a loon” photos.

For sparrows and sparrow-adjacent birds, we saw some Northern flickers, sparrows of the song, golden and white-crowned variety, as well as one especially vocal crow. There were some finches and juncos for good measure, and what Merlin tells us was a sharp-shinned hawk sitting atop a distant tree. Neat!

We also discovered a trail we have missed despite being to Blackie Spit many times. We noticed a woman sitting on a bench on the other side of a creek, where we assumed you could not reach. Clearly she had reached it. We then discovered the path, which is narrow, but affords a different view. We now know for the future.

By the time we finished lunch and wound up the trip to Blackie Spit, the light was getting low. As mentioned, we had not seen any shorebirds, and Nic wanted to see shorebirds, so we headed off to Piper Spit at Burnaby Lake, to get in a few minutes of birding before the sun set. We arrived a little over half an hour before sunset and stayed until ten minutes before. By that point, the light had shifted from (very) golden to dim and the temperature began to drop noticeably.

But we did see shorebirds! And more Steller’s jays. Those guys are everywhere now, it seems. It was kind of fun to get shots in the somewhat extreme lighting conditions, but that’s what the denoise filter is for, amirite?

We also saw a bunch of people launching canoes from Piper Spit. Now, canoeing on the lake is fine, but launching your canoes from the middle of a bird sanctuary is a bit rude. They temporarily displaced most of the birds as they moved out. One woman on the pier was quite animated about how she felt about these canoodlers. This also happened as the sun was dipping behind the trees, so I don’t know if they were planning to paddle by the light of the crescent moon or had flashlights, because pretty quick it was going to be dark.

In any case, we were done, and I somehow took over 700 shots, of which several were actually salvageable. Woo! Time to watch more camera tutorials, because then I can blame someone else for my shots of varying quality.

The Shots

Soon™

The Birds (and other critters)

Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:

• Black-capped chickadee
• Dark-eyed junco
• Fox sparrow
• Golden-crowned sparrow
• House finch
• Northern flicker
• Song sparrow
• Spotted towhee
• Steller’s jay
• White-crowned sparrow

Waterfowl:

• American coot
• American wigeon
• Bufflehead duck
• Canada goose
• Common loon
• Eurasian wigeon
• Green-winged teal
• Long-billed dowitcher
• Mallard
• Northern pintail
• Wood duck

Common:

• American crow
• Rock pigeon
• Seagull

Raptors:

• Northern harrier
• Sharp-shinned hawk (probably)

Non-birds:

• Black, grey and Douglas squirrels