Hume Park

Birds on the river, March 19, 2024

These shots were taken on the first day of spring. The weather was sunny and pleasantly warm, so I grabbed my camera and went to Lower Hume Park. Lo, there was a heron out fishing in the Brunette River, and a few other birds about.

Great blue heron up close, watching for fishies
The heron about to grab a snack
A humble dandelion, looking slightly more dramatic in the bright sunlight
Female mallard sunning on a dry section of the river
A robin listens in the courtyard of my condo complex
Still listening…
Striking a pose

Mini-birding, March 2, 2024: A rare robin

Rare because it was in focus! Also, the outing was mini, not the birds. They were full-sized.

I gave my camera a thorough cleaning and took it to Lower Hume Park this afternoon to test it out and see if it would behave or go berserk.

It behaved!

I saw a Northern flicker, a pair of mallards, a bunch of robins and a song sparrow. I got pictures of all of them, but the song sparrow refused to stand still, so every shot is either an action shot, or it has its head down or facing away.

Here are three of the flicker, a robin and the male mallard.

Northern flicker searching for bugs and things.
A robin alert for worms.
A mallard gliding in a small pond that only exists after a heavy rain.

A river rages, plus birds in a field

Shot yesterday (Jan. 23) on my iPhone 12, on a gray, wet winter day.

The Brunette River, misty and rising. The tent on the far bank is now gone.
View from the bridge on North Road. The construction on the left is for the new Millennium Line maintenance yard, set to open in 2027.
Ducks in the field at Lower Hume Park. The crows and gulls got very twitchy when I stopped to take photos. The ducks just kept sticking their heads in the muck.

A trip to the pseudo-marsh

We just had one of those fun atmospheric rivers come through the area, and they always live up to the name, dumping huge amounts of water before moving on.

This afternoon I made a trip with my camera to Lower Hume Park and found the field to be squishy, muddy, and very marsh-like. There were ducks.

And seagulls and crows. And up top, some golden-crowned sparrows and several elusive juncos. The light was not great, but I got a few decent shots (I’ll post more later). Here’s a crow I shot on the way back home:

As the crow perches.

And a shot of the still very high Brunette River:

Whoever is in that tent is pushing their luck.

A few birds and things in Hume Park, April 13, 2023

Chickadees gathering nesting material, geese shacking up, and more.

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.