Photos I’ve taken of scenery, interesting objects and other things.
Which my iPhone rotated to portrait mode, as it sometimes does when it doesn’t have a horizon line or something for reference, so I had to decide if I liked it better in portrait or if I wanted to rotate it back to its original landscape.
I left it as is. Enjoy!
Where: Richmond Nature House, Iona Beach Regional Park (Richmond)
Weather: Mostly sunny, 3-6°C
The Outing
The nice thing about Richmond Nature House is the birds gather nicely together for you, thanks to a bunch of feeders arranged behind a fence just north of the house itself. It’s like a birding buffet.
Despite the cooler temperatures, there was no wind here, so it felt fine. As before, juncos were very well-represented, and towhees were also rather abundant. We did see a nuthatch, but it didn’t stay around long, though a hairy woodpecker gave us plenty of opportunity for photos. Squirrels of various types were back gorging themselves in the feeders and even the rat was back, nibbling at seeds on the ground with its creepy yet cute forepaws, which kind of look like little human hands.
A number of Anna’s hummingbirds were present, too, and I actually got some decent shots of them in flight (albeit with blurred wings, since I was letting the camera do all the heavy lifting).
In all, we got a very nice set of birb photos here.
I wasn’t expecting to see a lot of birds at Iona, and the wind picked up, so it was a tad cold. The tide was also in, which meant the opportunities for seeing shorebirds was greatly reduced–or so we thought!
There were a bunch of herons ringing the main pond, like silent stabby sentinels. Unfortunately, most were a little too far away, but at least they don’t jump all over the place when you’re shooting them.
Our trek past the pond and through the wooded area yielded no birds, but we did see a pair of bald eagles land on a log boom as we swung by the river. Further up were a trio of cormorants resting on some pilings, along with some gadwalls and wigeons (to be clear, the gadwalls and wigeons were not on the pilings with the cormorants, though that would have made for some very interesting shots).
There was also a crow standing on top of a sign, acting very dramatic. We took pictures, it seemed satisfied, then flew off.
Just before heading out, we saw a very round song sparrow, which are probably the birbiest of birbs around here. We thought we were done, but as we started driving off, we saw the tide was now beginning to go out and lo, there were shorebirds!
We got some shots of dunlins and killdeer tooling around along the shore, as well as a look at probably hundreds of pintails gathered in one of the ponds adjacent to the sewer/water plant. Most were snoozing. Presumably it doesn’t smell that bad in there. Or pintails have a lousy sense of smell.
The biggest surprise, though, was an area of bushes and trees along the pipe leading to the jetty, where a surprisingly large number of ruby-crowned kinglets were flitting about. We both managed to get some decent shots of them, which is normally something of a miracle, especially for me.
I seemed to have better luck with Nic’s camera this time. I’m not sure what I did differently, though maybe having full use of both arms and hands helped. Whatever it was, it was nice to not have a giant boatload of blurry photos to sort through (I had a smaller boatload of blurry photos, but most were pretty decent!)
The Shots
Soon™
The Birds (and other critters). Rare or rarely-seen birds highlighted in bold.
Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:
Waterfowl and shorebirds:
Common:
Raptors:
Non-birds:
I feel like I have things to say, but I never really know how to say them, so I end up saying nothing. On the plus side, I’ve posted a lot of cats pics, which are the fuel of the internet.
For a change of pace, here’s the Brunette River, from a slightly different vantage point, as the river was quite low and I was able to sneak farther down than usual:
(Slightly altered in Luminar AI, mostly to remove the green runoff pipe and fix the sky a bit [but no giraffes])
On a walk to the doctor’s office. It caught my eye.
Taken at the Brunette River.
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
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.
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:
Waterfowl and shorebirds:
Common:
Raptors:
Non-birds:
It’s the first birding of 2025. The trails were absolutely thick with joggers. There were some birds, too.
Where: Burnaby Lake Regional Park (Burnaby), Tlahutum Regional Park (Coquitlam)
Weather: Partly sunny, 7-8°C
The Outing
We arrived at Burnaby Lake to find it teeming…with runners. Seriously, I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen so many people jogging here. I guess it’s been some time since we had a non-rainy Saturday.
I did not have my camera because I am in the midst of IV treatments for an infection, which means I have a bandaged IV in my left arm, making it very awkward and unadvisable to try holding up a camera. I settled for taking lots of scenery shots instead.
But there were also birds, including both ruby and golden-crowned kinglets, nuthatches and the elusive chestnut-backed chickadees. The light was a tad gloomy, which made the bird shots more challenging, but added lots of mood to the scenery shots.
The Stumps (not my alternative country rock band) and a log at the intersection of the main trail and Conifer Loop were the main gathering spots for songbirds, due to both locations being festooned with seed. This was convenient for us!
At the Spit, the landmass is still quite large but today was mostly empty, save for a few gulls and a wandering group of pigeons. The Shorebird Spot™ was so low it was mostly mud, but a clutch of dowitchers was closer in to be shot, while a larger group dozed farther out.
Overall, a good variety, despite the light, plus a bonus seagull proudly strutting with a golf ball in its mouth.
There were mergansers, buffleheads, gadwalls and wigeons in the various waterways here, but as usual, none very close. We checked the community garden, but it is more the community swamp, so we opted to give it a few more weeks/months to dry out a bit before venturing in.
The Millennium Bridge over the rivers had a bunch of dots spray-painted on it, because in just a few days it’s being closed for two weeks to replace the deck. Had this been in progress, our trip to Tlahutum would have been a lot shorter.
I filled in multiple holes on the trail apparently dug up by an over-stimulated dog, as I’ve recently become a Tripping Hazard Expert (THE). It seemed like the right thing to do.
The large pond is currently at its most open and exposed, which aids in getting nice shots, especially when the water is calm and snazzy clouds are reflecting in it. Everything is very brown, though. It’s like an organic Quake level1Yes, I know Quake came out in the 1890s, this is a joke for The Olds.
Overall, a pleasant, if somewhat unusual first outing of the year. I should be handling a camera again, so look out world, incoming fuzzy junco shots!
The Shots
None! No camera. Instead, here is the best bird shot I got with my now ancient (in Tim Cook’s mind) iPhone 12:
The Birds (and other critters). Rare, rarely-seen or recently returned birds highlighted in bold.
Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:
Waterfowl and shorebirds:
Common:
Raptors:
Non-birds:
I made some enhancements using Luminar AI (but resisted adding giraffes).
When I went for a walk today, the sunny sky had given way to fog, creating a spooky kind of atmosphere.
It’s the river, in the future year 2025. It looks pretty much the same, though today someone was fishing in it. Or trying to summon a water spirit, perhaps. They were too far away for me to tell for sure.
As the title says.
I didn’t notice the heron until looking at the photo after getting home. They are very good at being very still.
