Dripping wet, but ...

... it wasn't raining. Not really, anyhow; the water in the air was just a Scotch mist. We took a chance on it not getting wetter, and went down to Cougar Creek Park.

It's a grey spot, in the winter; grey trees, grey water, grey skies, grey bridge. And black and white birds, mostly.

A drop of yellow in the willow, red in the canes. Hints of a future spring.

Last summer, we saw a cormorant here several times, and I was hoping it would stay. It did; today we saw three of them.

Double-crested cormorant. A fish-eater. Unexpected in such a small "lake".

These mergansers were here last spring, too.

Hooded merganser, male.

It's the beginning of breeding season, and they are wearing their most showy finery. This next photo is blurry, but I liked it because one of the males is strutting his stuff to impress a female (the one in the brown hairdo.)

"Look at me! See how white my breast is! How tall I am!"

Wigeon, on patterned water.

A spot of welcome colour.

And, of course, the mallards. A flock of them slept on the mud bank at the far end of the lagoon, a few wigeons among them. This one came over to see if I had any goodies. I didn't.


Far end of the lagoon, where Cougar Creek enters. That's the remains of an attempt at making a beaver dam at the curve; the beavers keep building it in different spots, and someone keeps tearing it up.

Protected tree. Felled anyhow. Its branches ended up at a new dam at the outlet.

The old heron was still there, still as grumpy as ever. He waited until I was a few metres away, with the camera ready, then dodged behind the bushes and flew to the far side. As usual.

Other than that, there were a few common merganser males. I didn't see any females. And the trees by the creek were full of little brown birds, assorted sizes. We identified bushtits, a small woodpecker, several robins. And sparrows, of course.

LBB, very cold.

The trail went on past the schoolyard, but our batteries were failing, and there wasn't a dry spot to change them. Tim Horton's time!

Path in the mist.

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Very bad photos of good birds

We weren't birding, this Saturday; we had other things to do. We voted in our local elections, then headed for a bi-annual pottery sale in Tsawwassen. Afterward, we would have lunch in Beach Grove, and then, weather permitting, go for a short walk. All very organized.

The voting went quickly. But the procedure was different than usual; they gave us pages to fill out by connecting arrows, using their pens, not ours. And those pages were fed into a machine that swallowed them and left the worker with the folder only. She said it had counted our votes already. I'm not so sure I trust these contraptions.

On to the pottery sale!

Except that we got side-tracked. On the far side of a plowed field, we saw a small flock of white birds. We turned off and parked on the farm road.

Trumpeter Swans

Too far away for good photos; why don't they come this way?


Oh. They've got a windfall: plowed-up carrots. Do swans eat carrots? It seems that they do.

They honked constantly. It sounded like a 5-year-old's birthday party, with all the kids at once blowing those silly plastic horns.

On to the pottery sale!

With a slow-down to check out an eagle's nest by the highway. No eagle there now. (There was when we were heading home.) Slow-down to look at a blue heron in the ditch, another for a flock of starlings that rose in a sudden cloud when we passed. Slowdown for Laurie to get these ducks in an artificial pond. (Two years ago, it was a bare puddle; then there were weeds, now grasses. Ducks are a new development.)

The car is moving. Not the ducks.

There were no birds at the pottery sale. Not even pottery birds.

It was late, and the weather was beautiful, so we stopped at Tim Horton's for soup, bought a couple of bags of bird seed at Bosley's for my feathery family at home, and went on to the beach at Beach Grove. The tide was in, the birds were out. Way out.

Mixed rafts of waterfowl. Too far away to identify.

A pair of loons swam close to the shore at one point, teasing us by diving in unison, halving the chances we got at photographing them. (Laurie got a beautiful shot of two circles on the blue wavelets, circles where two loons* had been when he pressed the shutter.)


Caught them, just after they surfaced. Didn't wait to focus.

Later, in the distance, we heard them laughing.

On the chimney of one of the houses, a seagull posed. At least, until he saw a camera pointed in his direction. Then:

Mooning us.

Looks like he's standing on wingtips.

Back into Beach Grove for coffee and tea. On the way, this Downy teased us, hopping from the backside of one branch to the far side of the next.


Caught him, anyhow. Once, and blurred.

Time to head home. For us and these crows; they were part of a long stream (river, even) of crows going west, as usual at this time of the night. I've watched them many a time, tried to count occasionally; there must be several hundreds, maybe even thousands, wherever it is that they go home to in the evenings.


So much for not birding.

*I was wrong. They were mergansers, Seabrooke says. I should have looked more closely, rather than relying on the clue of the laughing loons.
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October in the parking lot ...

... on a sunny afternoon at Tim Horton's:

Enticing colours; "Look around! Don't go home until you've seen what we've done here!"


Multicoloured trees ...


and shrubs ...




Scattering leaves ...


and bark.

I like the way droplets of water serve as magnifying glasses on fallen leaves:


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Seen outside the Tim Horton's

In the street. Parked in a no-parking zone.

Not In Service.

Sorry 'bout that.

Numbers removed, to keep the driver out of trouble. Because no-one can be expected to withstand the draw of a good Tim Horton's coffee and a bag of TimBits. No-one.

End of a Long, Busy Day

... and I'm so tired, my mind's a blank.

I took this photo over afternoon coffee. A moment of quiet, with the mad scramble left outside.


Tim Horton's, Kin's Farm Market and a gas station (reflected).

Blueberry muffin and Garlic

Playing with my new camera again.

Garlic, responding to our BC spring humidity.

And a muffin at Tim Hortons. Blueberry. Laurie's favourite.


I'm really supposed to be either working or sleeping, so as to get to work early tomorrow. Deadlines, again.

So I guess that's it for tonight.

Tomorrow: nebalia pugettensis, and an experiment with lenses.