September 2017

Nature Vancouver organizes walks and lectures in Vancouver.  On this Sunday morning, they organized a walk at Reifel Bird Sanctuary out in Ladner.  The walk started when they open at 9am.  I arrived a few minutes early (it's about a 45 minute drive from where I live) and was surprised to see a line up of cars at the gate.    The manager at the sanctuary was unlocking the gate, but I could tell it was going to be a busy day.

Kids like the Sanctuary because of the endless streams of mallards looking for bird food.  Grown ups like it because interesting birds show up to rest there as they continue their migration to places much south of here.  At this time of the year, Yellowlegs (small birds on unreasonably long legs) were common in the ponds.

There are resident birds that are here most of the year.  Peregrine falcons and Northern Harriers are common predators year round here.  When we walked out to the ponds, they were surprisingly quiet until we saw Peregrine flying quickly by, hunting it's next meal.  Small shore birds were wary.

We started our walk shortly after 9am and were done before noon.  It was a good day!

Claira has Gymnastics on Saturdays around lunch time.  Nara broke her arm in the summer so she can't do gymnastics this fall.  While Claira is in class, Nara and I have been going out on little activities.  So far, we are two for two where the activity included face paint.

After Chinese class, we sometimes go out for a treat.  On ice-cream place we like in Chinatown stopped opening in the evening so we picked a new place - Soft Peaks in Gastown:

The big military ports in BC are on the Island so we don't often see militiary ships in the harbour.  Two Japanese training ships are doing a world tour and stopped in Vancouver.  They organized an open house where the public could step aboard and take a look.  It was a rainy day, but we decided to check it out.