Photography

Photos I’ve taken of scenery, interesting objects and other things.

Centennial Beach, March 4, 2023

A few shots from Centennial Beach taken today. It was super windy and started to rain not long after we arrived, so we bailed early. But I shot a few birds before we bailed.

Golden-crowned sparrow thinking about seeds.
Common goldeneye. Not to be confused with the Bond movie.
Mallard mulling.
A pair of goldeneyes. Or two pairs of golden eyes.

Rusty the pipe, in black and white

Suddenly I have the urge to turn every landscape photo into a stark black and white image. It must mean something.

This is a large rusted pipe that sits just off the Western Dyke Trail at Reifel Bird Sanctuary. I’d love to know how it got there, as it’s nowhere close to the shore. The photo was taken on February 11, 2023.

Maplewood Flats, February 18, 2023

Some photos from Maplewood Flats.

Song sparrow
Chickadee in a thorny situation
One of the first decent shots I’ve gotten of a golden-crowned kinglet.
Common Goldeneye x2
A rare in-focus shot of a dark-eyed junco.
Wild berries.
One of four deer grazing in the area.

A tiny lighthouse

There’s a pseudo-diorama outside a yard a few blocks away from my place. There are two lighthouses next to each other (double the safety?) and this is what I feel is the more handsome of the two, which I shot today:

Reifel Bird Sanctuary and Iona Beach, Feb.11, 2023

The day was gray, and the sun only poked out a few times, but it was nice as always to get out among the birds. While the light was not always great, the birds often gave good pose to make up for it.

Here are a few of the photos I took.

Goose pondering, plus bonus goose pondering
The stare of a spotted towhee burning through your soul
Bald eagle hanging out atop a favourite tree
A song sparrow seriously questioning what I’m doing
A black-capped chickadee with the weirdest expression I’ve ever seen on one
An American coot having a nice stretch

And for now, I leave you with two blackbird photos, each weird in its own way.

The motion blur on this one gives the blackbird a spooky, spectral quality
This is what a blackbird looks like head-on when it’s screeching. Terrifying.

Golf ball drama at Piper Spit

I went solo today for birding and managed an hour or so at Piper Spit, getting home just as the rain started. Timing!

Here are a few shots, including some action involving a fluorescent golf ball, some crows and seagulls.

This mallard declared himself King Duck, briefly.
The wind floofing a coot.
Two participants in the golf ball drama.
Pardon the blurriness. The golf ball drama.

The missing frog

On June 25, 2022, I went to Burnaby Lake to shoot photos, then never posted any of them. Oops.

Today, while pruning out my photos on OneDrive, I came across these photos and found one of a frog–the only frog I’ve taken a photo of at Burnaby Lake (or anywhere). so here is the frog, seven months late.

A Bewick’s wren and other birbs

Yesterday at Burnaby Lake I managed to get some photos of a Bewick’s wren, which I’d never seen before. Spiffy! Plus chickadees and other assorted birds. Here are a few shots.

Bewick’s wren. Totally adorable.
Chickadee. Perfectly adorable.
Canada goose. Somewhat adorable when young, or not hissing at you.
Seagull, definitely not being adorable.
Coot adorably demonstrating water physics.
Lesser scaup adorably caught mid-preen.
Long-billed dowitcher, adorable in the shallows.

Random shots around Hume Park

My goal in walking around Hume Park today was to take shots of things I don’t normally take shots of, or to shoot things from different angles. One of those “see things in new ways” kind of things.

Looking up to one of the trails that line the western side of the ravine (look closely, you can see the fence).
From the path connecting the lower and upper parts, looking out across the Brunette River and beyond it, the future maintenance yard for the Millennium Line.
Moss on a tree.
Picnic area.
Just some trees catching the sun.