A little later, I decided to go for a walk down the quay. It was getting a bit late (too late for good flower shots--the flowers are all in the shade in the late afternoon and early evening). I got a few late daylight photos. Here's one of an orange kitty that I see from time to time along the walkway.

And here's a picture of the Central City building in Surrey, as seen from the Quay. In just a few days, I will be working in this building. My office in on the fifteenth floor, with a nice view. It's in the right-hand part of the building in this photo. Once I move in, I'll leave something obvious by my window and then I'll be able to send a photo showing exactly where my office is.

I can't quite see my home from my office, but I can see the island that's about 20 or 30 meters in front of my place in the middle of the river. I guess I'll have to take my camera to the office and take some pictures of the view, too.

On my way back to my condo, I saw a few tugs maneuvering a log boom through a swinging rail bridge. (Rather than the bridge drawing up, the middle section of it rotates 90 degrees, positioning the middle rail section parallel to the river, allowing boats to pass on either side.) Here's a hand on one of the tugs preparing a line in order to pull the log boom towards where I was standing.

That's pretty much it for the 31st of July. I went back out on Sunday, the first of August. This time I did go birding; I went back to Reifel Bird Sanctuary to see if I could find those two birds that I had missed when I went there on the 30th of July.

I first checked the slough by the entrance for the night heron. It wasn't there, so I headed on in. It turns out that not much was going on there. There were a lot of the usual characters around, such as this Lesser Yellowlegs.

On the return leg of the circuit I did, I found this puffy-breasted girl hanging out by one of the ponds. I haven't been able to get a positive I.D. on her, but she looks to me to be some sort of Icterid (blackbird, cowbird, or grackle). If I had to guess, I'd say she's a Brown-headed Cowbird, but luckily, I don't have to guess. I'll just leave her unidentified.

As I was headed for the exit, a pleasant surprise awaited me in the form of about eight people gathered near the blind that looks out over the slough. The Black-Crowned Night Heron had appeared, not in his usual place, but a ways down across the slough. I got a few pictures of him from about 30 or 40 meters. That distance means I have to use a teleconverter with my lens (basically another lens that goes between my usual lens and my camera). The problem with that is that the teleconverter degrades the image quality.

Anyway, here's one of the better photos I was able to get. He is a pretty cute bird. He's not as big as a Great Blue Heron; he's more crow-sized.

That was the first time I'd ever seen a night heron, so it was pretty neat. I was able to take pictures for about ten minutes before he crawled up into the bushes behind him there and disappeared from view.

I'd really like to get a chance to take photos of him when he's at his usual location on the near side of the slough. Then I could get some clear, big photos of him.

After Reifel, I drove back across Westham Island, and I found a farm field with a few workers in it right after crossing the bridge back into Ladner. Here's one of the workers. I think he's picking whatever that vegetable is, but I watched him for only a short time, so I'm not sure.

Going back to New Westminster, I stopped by the BNSF yard again. Here I caught a couple of engines parked, while a skytrain (our local rail transit, for those of you not from here) passes on the left.

After a few shots there, I went back home, where I poked around in the CN train yard behind my condo. The skytrain passes by this rail yard as well, and here I've caught two skytrains passing above a train of grain cars.

So all in all, I spent more time taking photos of trains than I did taking photos of birds that weekend. I'm not terribly surprised at that...trains are one of the photo subjects that I return to quite often. In fact, I've taken a lot more train photos since then. I'll mainly keep them to myself and try to send interesting nature shots along, though.

But that's enough for now.

Until next time,
Tom