May 2016

There have been a lot of Osprey's in my life recently.  When I was in Hong Kong in March, I saw an Osprey in Deep Bay.  Back in Vancouver, I saw four to six of them at Iona Spit (but they were in Vancouver).  It occured to me that I had no photos of Osprey's where they are any appreciable size in the frame - all my photos are of smudges of pixels that I happen to know are Ospreys.  There is a very visible Osprey nest at Pitt Addington Marsh (in Pitt Meadows) - all I had to do was drive out and take a look!

I arrived just before 6am when the gates to the park opened.  (Nara had Chinese class at 9:15am, so I had to be home by 8:30 to get her to class).  I walked out to the nest (it's over the water but there is a dike top road very close by) and spotted a bird apparently keeping eggs warm.  I hung out for about 45 minutes to see the mate come back with fish and the animals switch positions on the nest.

Nature Vancouver organizes birding walks on most weekends.  Last month I tried on at Iona Spit, this month I thought I would try Colony Farm.  I've wanted to go to this park before (it's good for biking if you are comfortable with dike top riding), but I've never had the event to make it happen.  Saturday morning, 8:30am we got started.

When the longest lens I owned was a 200mm lens, I used to think of "birds" as owls and hawks and things you could get close to, and everything else as a "Brown Jobby" - too difficult to photograph well.  Now that I own a longer lens there is a much larger world of birds to see.  Birds that I used to think of as exotic (basically anything yellow) are turning out to be more common than I thought.  I have new appreciation for how much diversity there is out there.
 

 
I was surprised how much had changed from last year.  It looks to me that they lease the bouncy castles because they were all different (and some brand new) from last year, but each castle served roughly the same purpose - a double height slide, an obstacle course climber and two smaller younger kids play areas.  The plasma cars look like they are reused as is some of the sports equipment.  The kids played for two plus hours before they needed a snack and started to wind down.

In our 5 minutes of biking, the kids did see baby ducks and a bullfrog.  They do enjoy biking, but we didn't make it around the lake.  We have previously spotted bullfrogs in the lake - we found one today in less than a minute.

But Claira had to go.  We packed in the car, I dropped the wife and kids off and circled like a vulture. 
 

 
The aquarium has a mix of frogs on display.  The Bullfrog display lets you really look into the eyes of this invasive species.  They have a 360 tank loaded with medium sized frogs.  They have a number of small tanks with tropical frogs.  I was surprised the kids dwelled at each one.
 

Last week I went out to Iona Spit to take a photo of a Yellow-headed Blackbird.  I got a photo.  While I was there, a photographer came up and showed my an image on his camera and asked me if I knew what it was - he had a photo of an American Goldfinch.  Last week I found the bird I wanted, I figured I would try and find the bird I wanted again, this time smaller. 

Sadly, no luck.  I heard the bird, but it likes to live in the bushes (I think) and I never even saw a flicker of one.  The tree swallows were really entertaining and the yellow headed blackbird landed really close by, but no luck with the Goldfinch.

After Nara's Chinese class, we try to do something fun.  We grabbed lunch and then went to Terra Nova Adventure playground for some serious playground time.  Nara and Claira are at different levels in this playground (we let Nara go up the three story slide by herself, we go with Claira and only if there isn't a crowd).  Nara really likes climbing on the logs (Claira likes the stones).  Both kids like the zipline and the slide.