Dedicated birders

Plain Jane and Chia, birdwatching on a foggy afternoon:

"Sparrows, juncos, chickadees, and ... is that an eagle?"

"She's getting too excited."

"Just remember: they're MY birds."

It was Jane's last afternoon; she's gone back to her usual home, to watch her own set of birds.

(Jane is an indoor cat; she wouldn't even go outside when she had access. And Chia won't visit the front yard where the bird feeders are in the daytime, because a big black Lab hangs out in the yard next door. So the birds feed safely.)

October colours, with mud for contrast

The mud flats. It's been a while since we last squelched across them. This Sunday afternoon felt right; we parked near the inner reaches of Boundary Bay and ventured out. The tide was low and the afternoon warm. A couple of kids, far out on the mud, were digging for clams, using only their hands. (I talked to them, and showed them how to find the exit tunnel of a mud dweller. And were they ever a mess! Mud critters, themselves.) A man threw sticks for his dog in the distance; other than that, the flats were quiet.

Those white spots are golf balls. There were several dozens scattered about, some new, some old. How and why they got there, I don't know.

Across the water, Mount Baker was practicing its levitation techniques. And hundreds of sandpipers fished for goodies far away along the tide line.

Mount Baker, flying. Sandpipers, wading.

The mud was not too deep here. It squished between our toes and spattered our legs, but didn't try to steal our sandals. We collected pink Macoma shells (with the two flatworms, but I didn't know that) and washed them off in little pools. We left the lugworms and snails in peace.

Lugworm heaven.

Lugworm poop.

Snail trails.

Trail blazers.

Under this volcano, a clam hides. I dug one out; it was flat and brown.

We walked to the edge. The tide was coming in, racing, the way it does here; we beat it back to the shore, and a passageway to the street. The fall foliage was a welcome sight after all that grey-brown.

Orange, yellow, red. And a pair of mailboxes.

Rose hips.

A pair of dragonflies, darners, were visiting the fruiting heads of sumac. They ignored the leaves. I wondered if they were feeding on insects feeding on the fruit.

Darner, possibly the Blue-eyed darner. A male, going by the three appendages on the tail end.

Red, yellow, green, blue.

Back at the car, a neighbourhood cat watched the street from our roof.

Whitey

We washed our feet under a handy tap beside a driveway, and went to Tim Horton's.

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High temps, low cat

It's too hot. Far too hot. Today, in Vancouver, the temperature reached 25.8°C. (That works out to 78.4°F.) And here on our hill, it was even hotter; on the sunny side of the street, the thermometer read almost 30°C.

Yes, I know that's nothing. Down south, you might call it a cool day. But this is Canada! Our normal for this period is a high of 18°C (65°F), according to Environment Canada.

If this keeps up, I tell Laurie, I'm moving to Nunavut. In Kugluktuk, they're offering a nice, balmy 9 to 12°C (53.3°F) for this week.

This cat had found herself a cool spot under a car in Beach Grove:

Comfy.

She's the flattest cat I have ever seen!

Normal cat, not flat, wishing for air conditioning.

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Sometimes I wonder what she's thinking

Sasha, considering.

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Red snow, brown snow, blue birds.

I'm in Strathcona again, house- and cat-sitting. I arrived well after dark, but once I had settled in, I went out for a walk with the camera anyhow.

The camera does odd things, sometimes. This window had a red curtain, surrounded by deep red lights. The camera, on half a dozen shots, insisted on rendering the lights as white, the snow as red.

I had the camera set to "Available light", hand-held, which meant holding perfectly still for several seconds for each shot. Not easy, when you're shivering.

A little bare tree decorated with blue lights becomes a "V", with the quotation marks and all.

Or a flight of blue birds.

Other decorations, farther away, become check marks on the night.

MacLean Park, under trampled snow. The streetlights give a brown tinge to all the whites.

Lonely bench.

Telephone pole, with the remains of a local history in signs.

I had to use the flash on this one; there was no streetlight directly on it. Arnt Arntzen's "steel macaroni", again. With a light snow dressing, for flavour.

Anyone want a desk? With a nice screen? Freebie on the sidewalk.

And I'd had enough; my teeth were chattering. I came home to Sasha.


"It's about time!" she says.

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A busy shoulder

Finn Slough has but one road, along the landward side; the island is accessed only by foot or boat. The road, two lanes, with a deep ditch and no shoulder on the Richmond side, doubles as parking, storage, shop, and garden area for the houses with an anchor point (never all four corners) on dry ground.

There are no lawns, no driveways or garages. Cars and pick-up trucks line up, two wheels on pavement, the others on gravel or weeds. A scant 2 or 3 metres separates them from the back doors of the homes.

Some vehicles are more or less new; many are derelict, put to non-transportation uses. This one holds machinery in the pick-up bed, sprouting plants in the "greenhouse" cab, and cats on the engine hood:

Blackie and Number Four

The cats' caretaker came out while I was scratching their ears; he feeds them here, where it's warmer and out of the mud, all winter, starting a couple of weeks ago. The grizzled one is Number Four. (I didn't ask, but it could be that he came from Number Four Road, just around the corner.) He is fourteen years old; Blackie is younger.

Detail of the truck; foot rest between the cab and the rear fender.

At the next house, someone has been getting in the wood for the winter, splitting the logs right where they were dumped from the truck;

Alder, a weed tree. Good, quick-burning, aromatic wood, useful for cooking and starter fires.

Curious set-up; a tap in an old piling. Not connected to anything at the bottom.


Number Four keeping a planter company on an old chair.


I have no idea what this is. It's on a wall a few feet off the road.


Number Four again. Just because.

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Green and yellow and bumpy eyes

Sometimes the flash does weird things to the cat's eyes.


Look at this full-size (click) to see the hills and valleys in the irises. Is that the muscles contracting to respond to the flash, or an optical illusion?

This world is so full of mysteries ...
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The better to see you with

I never saw a pug-nose cat before. I met this one in an alley-way in Strathcona yesterday evening.


A baleful glare. Maybe it's the yellow eyes (click on the photo to get the full effect) or the scars on the face. (Is that a recent wound on his nose?) He looks like a scrapper. But he gave no sign of being annoyed by my photography, and sat there calmly while I experimented with flash/no flash and distant shots/close-ups. The light was fading, so I needed the flash, but it did strange things with his eyes:


One yellow eye, one green eye.

We will be house-sitting in Strathcona for the next two weeks. Blogging may be sporadic at first; my daughter's computer keeps adding uncalled-for formatting to this post. (It just needs to learn the rules: I am the boss, not it. I'll be giving it a good lecture tomorrow.)

Now, I'll hit "Publish" and see what happens. Wish me luck!
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Morning Paper

Meow!

(Just testing the postdate function.)
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One good thing about being sick ...

... is that I get a lot of computer housekeeping done. It's just enough effort to keep my mind off my troubles, but doesn't require any real thinking. And I'm not moving about; a big plus when every muscle aches.

So I've been cleaning out my photo files, getting rid of a lot that had been waiting on a decision until I had forgotten they were there. (It's easy to decide to chuck something when your head aches.) And I found quite a few interesting ones, also forgotten. I am going to have to devise a new way of sorting and tagging them so that doesn't happen again.

And I've thrown away old log files and leftover downloads, cookies for places I will never go again, etc. And defragmented the hard drive. All boring, routine chores.

Now I can start fresh. New year, freshened computer, and, I think, returning energy. Yay!

And, in a last bit of tidying up, here are two photos from the Strathcona Culture Crawl that I had somehow missed.

A sculpture by Mary Kathleen Barrett: more of her work at her website.


And, just after dusk, we passed this garbage bin with a warning sign:


"Lunatic cat", in French. Yowl!

Green Eyes and Red

Combine dim lighting, a beginner's camera, and candid shots: sometimes you get strange effects.

Like these eyes.


Or these.

Two birds and a cat.

... not together, mind you; I just decided to post a few photos I like.

Seagull, at White Rock Beach, enjoying a breeze.


Sasha, taking in the view in comfort. (She's 15; she deserves a soft perch.)


Hawk (Red-tailed?), also at White Rock Beach. Mid-November.