My parents live quite close to Outerbridge park. This is a
small park in the city, it has been good to me for wildlife
sightings.
There are a couple of small ponds in the
park and I've been surprised by the kinds of birds that show up in
these ponds. This time, I was surprised to see a pair of
Hooded Merganser swimming around the pond.
Around the corner from the pond, I saw a small flock of Golden
Crowned Kinglets looking for bugs. They move fast - meadow,
trees, rock walls, they dwell for a minute and then fly off to the
next place looking for food.
Being a garden, all of the plants are suspect garden store
products. There are something like 4 species of cloud
berries that could grow here (who knows what a a garden store has)
and roses in a garden could be anything but there are native roses
that live here. It's hard to be sure in this park.
Road Trip Day
Our trip to Island had been wet (they thought our ferry might be
canceled because of a strom) and it had rained pretty hard the
following day. Surprisingly it was sunny on Christmas Eve so
we decided to take a road trip to the west coast around
Shirley. My first destination was the beach at
Point-no-point, but the hotel says they have exclsuive
access. We drove back a bit to Fishboat Bay Community Park
to check the tide at that beach.
The tide was lower than the last time I visited, but this beach is
covered in fallen trees and rock and is still very slim. The
stairs down to the beach just survived a tree fall so we were
lucky to get to beach level.
Flea Beach
A few km back is Shirley and
Seaside Drive. We drove down the road to Flea Beach.
This beach is much better - lots more access, a picnic table and a
tire swing. There is a road side parking and the beach
access is via an old road you could still use if you had a robust
vehicle.
The kids had a lot of fun on the tire swing.
Lunch at French Beach Provincial Park
I have a soft spot for Shirley Delicious - it's a great lunch
place in a rugged location. They aren't open on Tuesdays and
today happened to be a Tuesday. Down in Jordan river is a
cafe but it is also closed. We picked up some things the
night before and decided to have a picnic at French Beach.
French beach is quite exposed so lunch was cold and fast.
Grandma packed hot chocolate in a thermos and that was definitely
the kids favorite.
Shirley Lighthouse
I quite like the
Shirley Lighthouse. It's a classic shaped lighthouse with a
nice parking lot and a short walk to get right up to the
building. The coast is rugged and the next stop looking out
into the Ocean is either Hawaii or Japan. There is rarely a
crowd. Seeing as it was Christmas eve, there was a Santa up
in the lens room.
Christmas
One one hand, taking
photos of Christmas gifts is a brag. On the other hand, it's
nice to document the scale of Christmas gifts year over year.
My Dad's birthday is
December 25th so we try to have a birthday party in the evening
separate from Christmas.
Boxing Day, Comox Valley
On boxing day we drove up to Comox
to have dinner with my Moms family. We arrived just before a
foggy sunset so I took a few photos beforew we headed in.
Jennifer and David cook up a Turkey dinner for 20+ guests and then
we exchange gifts.
The kids of course are waiting for dsesert. My Aunt makes
traditional Christmas Cake and pudding and my Mom makes her "Pink
Fluffy" which the kids love.
Elk Falls, Campbell River
There wasn't a lot going on Comox so we
decided to drive up to Elk Falls for a short walk.
It was a foggy day but the water volume was high.
Walking the Jetty at Iona Beach Regional Park
I have a birding book for Vancouver and it
lists birds you would expect to see in the lower mainland.
There are eleven species of birds that I don't have a phtoograph
of in the lower mainland. The book is quite old which lists
the invasive tropical Crested Myna as a Vancouver bird, but it
went locally extinct twenty years ago. One of the birds I am
missing is a "Long Tailed Duck" which I don't think I've ever
seen, but it's not that rare and Iona is a good place to see
them. I went out in the morning and started walking the
jetty.
The first birds I saw (in the ocean) was three male and two female
Buffleheads. These ducks are pretty common in ponds so they
are easy to photograph.
A little further down the jetty I spotted
a small bird on the rocks near the ocean. I thought it might
be a sandpiper or Dunlin. I'm still quite new to birding and
I find I'm wrong quite often. When I got back to the
computer, I found the best match is Sanderling - a species I have
seen in Tofino, but not in the lower mainland before.
As I got further out, I spotted individual birds in the water -
Western Grebes. These are diving birds that submerge for
tens of seconds and then surface for a while to eat what they have
brought up.
As I got to the end of the jetty, a photographer reached out to
mention their was a bird. The photographer wanted people to
keep a respectful distance so as to not scare the bird away.
The bird in his case was a snowy owl.
And some clever quip... 
