Photography

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

Birding, October 4, 2025: Coots canoodling

Where: Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake (Burnaby), Tlahutum Regional Park (Coquitlam)
Weather: Clouds and sun, 17°C

Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake

Blue sky and streaky clouds at Piper Spit.

We had an abbreviated day of birding because Nic was occupied with escaping a gay haunted house earlier. I like to think the ghost of Paul Lynde was constantly sassing the people trying to get out.

The later start, combined with fall, meant golden light and plenty of it!

We had barely (bearly?) left the Avalon parking lot before a woman advised us of a mother bear and two cubs near the equestrian area, which is…right next to the parking lot. Fortunately, we were heading the other way and our visit remained bear-free.

At the dam, we observed a heron that was acting a bit odd, exchanging its usual statue-like state for twisting its head and looking up, as if beseeching the sky to rain little fishies on it, or something.

Along the trail, we saw some towhees and song sparrows, and as a special bonus, some ruby-crowned kinglets. I got several terrible shots, but if you’re a bird expert, you might be able to ID them as ruby-crowned kinglets.

Alas, we did not see any new migrants at Piper spit, but the coot population has grown. We saw coot conflict, coot love and coots just being coots. A lone Northern shoveller and hooded merganser were in attendance, and the dowitchers actually came closer, which was nice of them. We saw a kingfisher as it was flying (way) off, and Nic has several blurry photos to prove it! The mallards have now mostly caught up to the wood ducks, looking shiny and iridescent again.

Despite a lot of shadow and only intermittent sun, it was a pleasant return to the lake.

Tlahutum Regional Park

Golden hour arriving at the Coquitlam River.

Golden hour was seriously kicking in by the time we left Tlahutum, only about 15 minutes before sunset. We saw some gadwalls, mallard, crows and a very golden golden-crowned sparrow sitting by itself in a lone tree. I spotted a rare sight–a Northern harrier in plain view, sitting on a post by a canal. Just as I started to focus on what would have been a very spiffy shot, it took off, but I did get a few decent shots of it in low flight.

The main pond is showing distinct signs of fall, with the lily pads in full retreat. The ducks there still tend to gather at the far side, though.

As we left, we wrapped up with our first sunset-adjacent shots of the year, which will be increasingly easier to do over the next few months. Hooray for short days1Note: I do not actually like short days.

Our next birding may be back at Reifel, where we will hopefully see some of these so-far shy migrants. If not, I’ll write a stern letter to The Birb Migratory Committee to complain.

The Shots

Shot with a Canon EOS R7 with 18-150 mm kit lens and 100-400 mm telephoto.

A few shots:

I am coot.
My best shot of the Northern harrier.
Golden hour arrives at Tlahutum.

The Birds (and other critters)

Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:

  • Black-capped chickadee
  • Red-winged blackbird
  • Ruby-crowned kinglet
  • Song sparrow
  • Spotted towhee
  • Golden-crowned sparrow

Waterfowl and shorebirds:

  • American coot
  • Belted kingfisher
  • Canada goose
  • Gadwall
  • Great blue heron
  • Green-winged teal
  • Hooded merganser
  • Long-billed dowitcher
  • Mallard
  • Northern pintail
  • Northern shoveller
  • Wood duck

Common:

  • American crow
  • Rock pigeon

Raptors:

  • Bald eagle
  • Northern harrier

Non-birds:

  • A few pollinators
  • A whole bunch of caterpillars

Early October clouds

Ominous!

The weather has been pretty typical of early October so far, though. Summer was also surprisingly normal, not too hot or humid. I do wonder if we’re being set up for an extended period of The Rains or lots of snow (boo, hiss). For now, though…it’s fine!

Image tweaked in Luminar to make it a little more dramatic. No clouds were harmed in the process.

Birding, September 27, 2025: Pretty boys

Where: Blackie Spit/Crescent Beach (Surrey), Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake (Burnaby)
Weather: Clouds and sun, 18°C

Blackie Spit/Crescent Beach

One of the creeks south of the spit itself.

We have had issues with parking at Blackie Spit before, but figured with the weather looking rather gray, that would not be a problem today. We were wrong! But it wasn’t just the regular crowd, there was a rowing event and the boats were hogging up a chunk of the main parking lot and the entire secondary lot, so we ended up parking near the Sunflower Café, just like the last time we had problems finding parking here.

This turned out to be a good thing, as it led us to discovering a lifer! Blackie Spit itself did not yield many birds, though we did see some juncos, chickadees and a house cat strolling the beach like it owned the place.

We also thought we saw the first massive flock of snow geese for the season. Nic gave a man and his kid a rundown on them. They were quite far off, but even across the bay we could hear them. When we looked at our photos later, we discovered they were actually Canada geese, just in super large numbers. Whoops!

The star, though, was as we were leaving, through a different-than-usual route. We heard some very loud chattering that Nic first thought was a squirrel, because they can sound weirdly bird-like when they want to. But no, this was an actual bird, blue and white, and with a jay vibe happening. Merlin confirmed it was a California scrub-jay. It was very pretty, as well as loud, and posed a fair bit before flying off. Technically it was north of its usual range, though we later found they have been seen before in the Lower Mainland and some parts north. Neat!

As an added bonus, the weather was much better than expected, with some sun and mild temperatures.

Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake

Cloudy and (feeling) cool at Burnaby Lake.

We did not see any new arrivals at Piper spit and by the time we got there, the sky had clouded over again and while the reported temperature was 18C, it did not feel like 18C.

Still, we did see multiple coots, a pair of wood ducks with the male doting on the female, a pile of snoozing dowitchers (a little too far off, boo), a twisty heron, and a bush packed full of blackbirds. The butterfly garden is pretty much done for the season, so no pollinators there. The male mallards are looking shiny again.

And only one family was feeding the birds this time, which is actually an improvement.

In all, not bad for the first birding of the fall. The lifer–and the excellent shots we got of it–made it totes worthwhile.

The Shots

Shot with a Canon EOS R7 with 18-150 mm kit lens and 100-400 mm telephoto.

A few shots:

The lifer: A handsome California scrub-jay.
Male wood duck being affectionate.
Song sparrow on the hunt for seed.

The Birds (and other critters)

Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:

  • Black-capped chickadee
  • California scrub-jay (lifer!)
  • Dark-eyed junco
  • Red-winged blackbird
  • Song sparrow
  • White-crowned sparrow

Waterfowl and shorebirds:

  • American coot (Three!)
  • Canada goose (one billion)
  • Great blue heron
  • Green-winged teal
  • Long-billed dowitcher
  • Mallard
  • Wood duck

Common:

  • American crow
  • Rock pigeon
  • Ring-billed gull

Raptors:

  • None

Non-birds:

  • A ton (probably several) of sea lions (!)
  • A hover fly
  • Several squirrels
  • A sassy house cat

Fall shmall

Taken this afternoon. It was sunny (as you can see) and got up to 24C, like it was still summer!

(If the forecast is accurate, this may change soon, but I’ll hang onto it for now.)

I would have shot the view to the east as well, but there was a guy sunbathing on a chaise on the river’s exposed gravel.

A few photos from Sapperton Landing, September 16, 2025

Also, it was weirdly hot for the middle of September, getting up to 28 or 29C today and feeling like 30C or higher. There was a pleasant breeze down at Sapperton Landing, so it actually didn’t feel too bad there.

I was going to take some scenery shots with my camera, but I brilliantly left both of my SD cards on my computer desk, so a couple of phone photos will suffice now1.

Fish mosaic, heavily post-processed in Luminar to surface all the mad detailz.
Was this plaque stolen? Removed for cleaning? I do not know, but hey, log boom, tugboat and river behind it!
A kooky 16:9 crop of a tugboat and log boom, with the Port Mann birdge in the background.
  1. Speaking of my phone, with the recent introduction of the iPhone 17 series, I am now officially five generations behind. Take that, Tim Apple, you would-be-dictator appeaser! ↩︎

Birding, September 13, 2025: Real gardens and fake herons

Where: Van Dusen Botanical Gardens, Deering Island Park (Vancouver), Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake (Burnaby)
Weather: Clouds in morning, clearing in afternoon, 17-24°C

Van Dusen Botanical Gardens

I think this is Livingstone Lake, the main body of water at the gardens.

It was cloudy in the morning, so light was sometimes tricksy, especially in the more woody areas, but the Van Dusen Botanical Gardens provided a nice change of pace. There were many exotic plants and birds and rocks and things. There was a waterfall that looked nice and was being sketched/painted by multiple people. You could even climb to the top of it, where the illusion was shattered by a very conspicuous pipe feeding the water to the falls. Oh well.

Birds were not as plentiful, but I did get a good workout on using manual focus on several spiders hanging around (a theme that would prevail throughout the day). We did see some chickadees, flickers and a few others, so it was not a total bust or anything.

We also saw busts–of historical botanists!

Nic defied the odds and managed to find our way out of the hedge maze before the maniac with an axe could get us (seasonal, winter-only). We went to the Heron Pond, but it only had two fake herons. We did not see any real ones the entire day, a sharp contrast to All Herons All The Time last week.

Overall, it was enjoyable to finally check out the place (I’ve lived in the Lower Mainland since 1986 and have never been), even if the birb count was low.

Deering Island Park

View from the bridge to Deering Island Park, a small patch of land peons like us are allowed to visit.

After shooting all the spiders, Nic suggested we check out a quaint little place called Deering Island Park. It looks like this in Apple Maps:

Deering Island Park: Spiders, spiders, spiders! But no birds.

Technically we saw a bird or birds, but it was mostly more spiders. But by this time, the sky was clearing up and that meant two things: Better light for when we saw (hopefully) saw birds and sunburn, because neither of us wore sunblock.

The area is a curious mix of horse stables and swanky homes. The sign for the non-official trail near the actual park basically said, “We rich folks will let you, the poors, use this short trail, but don’t do anything funny or unseemly while here because we are just barely tolerating your presence as it is.”

If you keep going past the end of the trail, there is an even more unofficial one that connects to what seems to be a service road to the nearby golf course. In Kerrisdale, there is always a nearby golf course.

Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake

Land (mass) ho at Burnaby Lake, along with shorebirds and dwindling lily pads.

We ended our afternoon at Piper Spit, where we saw actual birds in multiples! Seasonal migrants are still a bit slow to arrive (The weather? Alignment of the planets?) and in some cases we only saw a single representative of a particular species, like what was probably the same coot we saw last time. There was also a single blackbird.

But the lack of new migrants was offset by oodles of dowitchers, who were even closer than normal to the pier, thanks to the ever-more shallow water and a landmass that is now the size of a small town. There were even a few killdeer splashing about. Neat!

In all, it was a pleasant wrap-up to a summer of birding. We’ll see how many more migrants fly in over the next few weeks.

The Shots

Shot with a Canon EOS R7 with 18-150 mm kit lens and 100-400 mm telephoto.

A few shots:

A black-capped chickadee on a sunflower at Van Dusen Botanical Gardens.
A long-billed dowitcher preening at Piper Spit.

The Birds (and other critters)

Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:

  • Anna’s hummingbird
  • Bewick’s wren
  • Black-capped chickadee
  • House sparrow
  • Northern flicker
  • Red-winged blackbird
  • Song sparrow
  • Spotted towhee

Waterfowl and shorebirds:

  • American coot (One! Again!)
  • Blue-winged teal
  • Canada goose
  • Great blue heron (but fake)
  • Green-winged teal
  • Hooded merganser
  • Killdeer
  • Long-billed dowitcher
  • Mallard
  • Northern shoveller
  • Wood duck

Common:

  • American crow
  • Rock pigeon
  • Some gulls (?)

Raptors:

  • None

Non-birds:

  • Assorted pollinators
  • One black squirrel
  • A lot of spiders

Birding, September 5, 2025: I heard you like herons

Where: Reifel Bird Sanctuary (Delta), Richmond Nature House, Terra Nova (Richmond), Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake (Burnaby)
Weather: Hazy sun, 19-23°C

Reifel Bird Sanctuary

Hazy cloud on the horizon, past the still lush marshland.

For the second visit in a row, the gate was open at Reifel, meaning bookings were so low they opened the sanctuary to walk-ins. Er, drive-ins, I guess.

For the first half it was very quiet, apart from hardcore birders and their immense lenses, but more people filtered in later. As for birds, we did not see any coots here, or any other new migrants. Boo. But soon™.

We did a few more shovellers, so they are slowly coming out from wherever they hide in the off-season. The geese were plentiful, but were generally in an odd state of serenity, some of them looking downright relaxed, or even content. Very un-goose. Down on the bill was the fashion accessory of note.

Sadly absent were the Sandhill cranes. Hopefully we just missed them and they haven’t just flow off.

In place of the cranes were herons. Herons on the ground. Herons in the water. Herons in the air. Herons in trees. Herons on logs. Everywhere you looked, there was a heron.

The visibility of songbirds is increasing as we move close to the fall, and chickadees in particular are making themselves more known, though they continue to be manic and hard to photograph. We also saw some bushtits (heh heh), which we don’t spot too often here.

Everything is still looking lush and summer-like, but some of the leaves are coming down in a distinctly fall-like manner, and this may be one of our last t-shirt visits for the year. Still, it was perfectly pleasant, as always.

Richmond Nature House

Nic wanted to gamble on the Nature House, but other than the hummingbird feeders, the others are still bereft of seed, so birds were scarce. We did see a hummingbird, though! Then we walked the Bog Trail and Time Trail, but I observed neither a bog nor experienced any time travel. Disappointing!

Terra Nova

The main pond, home of at least one pied-billed grebe (not seen from this angle).

Other than pollinators and fixed-wing birds, we didn’t see much avian action here, other than some waterfowl way off on the shoreline and a grebe hanging out in the pond, which is their usual haunt (and also too far away to get shots without an arm-breakingly huge lens). The views are always worth checking, though. And we were encouraged to go walking and exploring to get away from an ice cream truck that had “Happy Birthday” playing on a loop near the entrance.

Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake

Visible haze looking across the lake to the east.

The weather rapidly began turning after we got to Piper Spit and by the time we left, the sky was quite dark for late afternoon as fat shower clouds rolled in. Several groups of Bad People were again feeding the birds. Boo and hiss. I opted not to shoot any of the birds gorging themselves on the illicit seed. They don’t know, but I do!

Apart from that, the land mass is now quite gigantic and is encroaching farther toward the pier. The increasingly shallow water meant some yellowlegs were poking about a bit closer than usual, which was fun. Multiple wood ducks are now in their full breeding colours and demonstrating that they are the prettiest boys around, with male mallards not too far behind in getting their iridescent green back.

We did see a green-winged teal, so the slow arrival of migrants continues. The one coot was still present, swimming about drama-free for now.

Shortly after leaving, the sky opened up, and we got a big, if brief, dump of rain. The day of birding remained dry and with mild temperatures, however, and the sporadic arrival of migrants bodes well for more sightings in the near-future.

The Shots

Shot with a Canon EOS R7 with 18-150 mm kit lens and 100-400 mm telephoto.

A few shots:

A spotted towhee striking a dramatic pose in very yellow light.
A Canada goose trying on facial hair.

The Birds (and other critters)

Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:

  • American bushtit
  • Anna’s hummingbird
  • Black-capped chickadee
  • Dark-eyed junco (says Nic)
  • House sparrow
  • Red-winged blackbird
  • Song sparrow
  • Spotted towhee

Waterfowl and shorebirds:

  • American coot (One! Possibly the same one.)
  • American wigeon (one!)
  • Canada goose
  • Double-crested cormorant
  • Great blue heron
  • Greater yellowlegs
  • Green-winged teal
  • Hooded merganser
  • Long-billed dowitcher
  • Mallard
  • Northern pintail
  • Northern shoveller
  • Pied-billed grebe
  • Wood duck

Common:

  • American crow
  • Rock pigeon
  • Various gulls

Raptors:

  • None. Maybe?

Non-birds:

  • Copious pollinators
  • One black squirrel, one gray squirrel