Green Timbers – creolened.com

Where: Green Timbers Urban Forest Park (Surrey), Tlahutum Regional Park (Coquitlam), Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake (Burnaby)
Weather: Sunny, 0-3°C

The Outing

Green Timbers Urban Forest Park

Green Timbers Lake: Frozen and mostly duckless.

We started out a brisk weekday birding at Green Timbers, which we haven’t been to since November 2023.

It was cold, as expected, and the trails were snow-covered, also as expected, but they were also very icy in areas, which for some reason I did not expect. We were careful, though, and stayed upright the entire time.

In terms of scenery, we got good shots of the frozen lake and environs, but birds were scarce–a few mallards gingerly walking on the ice, a fox sparrow, a few song sparrows and an elusive Bewick’s wren made up most of what we saw. to be fair, only one tiny portion of the lake was not frozen (we even saw someone skating on it, despite the THIN ICE signs).

With not much to see, we moved on, this time electing to skip the sham known as Big Hill.

Tlahutum Regional Park

A snowy field. We actually didn’t get much farther than this today.

We gambled on Tlahutum next, hoping we might see something in the community garden (negative, other than a lot of snow covering everything), though I did spot one towhee (see what I did there?) We consoled ourselves with getting some nice shots of the wintry Coquitlam River, except they are replacing the bridge deck Monday to Friday, which includes Wednesday, which is today, so we couldn’t get onto or across the brisge. Thus ended our trip here.

Piper Spit

Moving on to Piper Spit, we saw lots of actual birds to go with the frozen scenery. That was nice.

What was not as nice was me taking all of two shots before a bird pooped on my left shoulder. I had to go to the washroom to de-poop my hoodie, return, have Nic point out poop I missed (the washrooms there have no mirrors), de-poop a second time, then return to the spit and hope all pooping on me was done for this visit (it was).

A few species were especially plentiful today: crows in ever-increasing numbers, as they seem to be adopting the area as a stopping point on their trip to their nightly roost not too far away, gulls by the dozen, spread out over the land mass and further onto the frozen part of the lake, and, curiously, a lot of green-winged teals.

There was coot drama, gull drama, crow and gull drama (one gull had parked itself on the ice near some kind of crumbly human food, and a crow came up, yoinked on the gull’s tail, and the gull decided to just let the crow have the goods). The geese once again honked and took off to parts elsewhere.

The highlight (?) may have been two pigeons on the pier, who were very into each other, pursuing passionate pigeon play, with the male grooming the female copiously before, uh, following up with the rest. You could almost see the cigarettes being smoked afterward.

And of course, as usual, the gulls were pulling everything they could find out of the water, including pine cones, what appeared to be a yellow cloth that totally intrigued one gull, and something we could only determine might have been organic. No golf balls this time, though.

We both got some nice shots, including some very nice sparrow shots at Green Timbers, which was a pleasant surprise, given the scarcity of birbs there. And despite the cold, it never felt that cold. Overall, a perfectly pleasant outing.

I’m ready for the next one to have no snow, though.

The Shots

Soon?™

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

Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:

Bewick’s wren
Fox sparrow
Red-winged blackbird
Song sparrow
Spotted towhee

Waterfowl and shorebirds:

American coot
Canada goose
Green-winged teal
Mallard
Northern pintail
Scaup
Wood duck

Common:

American crow
Assorted gulls
Rock pigeon

Raptors:

None!

Non-birds:

Multiple squirrels

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.

Green Timbers, with lake. Image from Google Maps

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)