Stanley Park
A large park in the center of the city.
Visit the Beach
Stanley Park is impressive. Sure,
it has forests, large fresh water bodies and many examples of
wildlife asking for handouts. As if there weren't enough
bounty, you only have to walk a few steps off the sea wall to
visit the Ocean. Stanley park has a number of sandy beaches
where people like to swim, but my goal was the rocky beaches with
swift current found close to lions gate bridge.
Good tide pools aren't easy to find. The best ones like
Botanical Beach on the
west coast of Vancouver Island are worth the drive out to
visit. That said, finding a "pretty good" beach that is
close by can be a treasure. This is my second scouting trip
Stanley Park - my
first trip
was to beach that turned out to be too sand and turned into
battleground between seagulls and sea stars. This beach was
much better - plenty of sea stars and the mussels they like to
feed on.
Low tide must be a rough time of the day
for a sea star. When low tide coincides with noon, it has to
be especially rough. Sea stars are found hiding under every
ledge available at the low tide zone. The much harder purple
stars seems to be okay with lying exposed but the sunstars can be
watched heading for deeper cover or water. The purple
stars don't seem to mind that the sunstar (which are a predator)
are hanging about.
Sea stars aren't always plentiful - starting around 2012 they were
hit with some sort of wasting disease and for a few years were
much rarer.
The Sea Wall:
Perhaps the best known feature of Stanley
Park is the Seawall. This combined walkway/bike route
circimscribes the entire park and continue well outside of the
park. On beautiful summer days the sea wall can be a
battleground between the go fast crowd (runners and bikers) and
the go slow crowd (walkers and people crossing the bike
lanes). If you go with patience in mind, it's a beautiful
day.
Beaver Lake
There are two large bodies of fresh water
in the park - Lost Lagoon and Beaver Lake. Beaver lake
is small lake, very shallow and filled with lily pads and
ducks.
Sadly Beaver lake is basically the poster
child for invasive species. The lake is filled (and being
filled in by) invasive water lilies. The outer edge is
dominated by invasive iris. American Bullfrog's are common
in the water.
Animals
Considering how urban the park is, it
supports more than it's fair share of wildlife. There
is a great blue heron colony in the park and many small forest
birds are present in numbers. Lost Lagoon is a great place
to see ducks many sea birds.
Lions Gate Bridge
The Lions Gate Bridge is a particularly
scenic part of the park. The causeway connecting Vancouver
and North/West Vancouver bisects the park and exits off a cliff
and over the first narrows. The bridge is worth visiting at
night because of great job they have done illuminating the bridge.
Tags: Stanley Park(19), sea star(13), tide pool(8), Vancouver(7), bridge(5), beach(4)
From: John Harvey Photo > Stanley Park
From: John Harvey Photo > Photos of Vancouver > Stanley Park
Last Modified Saturday, January 28th, 2023 at 23:06:16 Edit
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