The second of August was a Monday. That morning I got up a little early and went up to the Maplewood Wildlife Preserve in North Vancouver. A little while ago, I made a journal entry with some other pictures that I had taken there.

I was hoping to see the deer again, hopefully the whole family, not just one.

Soon after I went in, I found some American Goldfinches. They were hanging around what looked to be some sort of thistle. One guy was pulling the little fluffy bits out of the thistle, one by one, and then letting them go. I presume he was eating the seeds attached to the bottom of the fluffy bits.

I walked around for a while..it was getting late in the morning and I wasn't seeing much bird life. I did see this Song Sparrow eating the blackberries. He should really wipe his mouth after eating.

I was about to leave when I decided to take another quick walk through to see if I could find the deer family. At one point I turned around to see two deer in the path behind me, but they quickly took off into the woods. I went to the place that I saw them and tried to see where they had gone. Despite them having headed into a patch of woods with relatively clear lines of visibility, they were nowhere to be found. Deer are like that--they can just melt into the woods.

So I got in my car and left the park, moderately satisfied with at least having seen the deer.

As I turned out of the Maplewood parking lot onto the road, though, I saw two deer (probably the same two deer) over at the edge of the parking lot of the crab shack across the road from Maplewood. I pulled into the parking lot and started taking pictures of the deer, while still sitting in my car. Here's a good head shot of one of them.

It turns out that these deer had been taking lessons from the Song Sparrow...they were over here to eat the blackberries.

Fresh blackberries are good...lip-smackin' good.

Now, I don't know if the missing fur on the side of this deer is from it somehow naturally falling out or if it's a result of close encounters with barbed wire or some other hazard. The animal seemed otherwise healthy.

I took photos of the two deer for about ten minutes before they decided to head back across the road. The first one to leave made a rude gesture at the traffic before going across.

(It sorta blends into the background in the photo, but he was sticking his tongue out.)

The second (smaller, younger) deer crossed the road after, but seemed a bit oblivious to the traffic, and one car had to slam on the brakes to avoid him.

Once across the road, the deer proceeded into the preserve and thence into the woods. I thought that there must be a gate in the fence that I hadn't seen...but I crossed the road myself and looked, and there was no such gate. The deer must have jumped over the fence. That's pretty neat, because the fence is relatively high...the majority of it is about 15 cm. (6 inches) lower than the gate in the following photo.

I didn't see them jump the fence; I wish I had (and gotten photos!). I've always known that deer can jump pretty high, though.

I went on to work, and then after work came home and took a few more photos in the rail yard behind my place. Here I caught an engineer that seemed to be trying to figure out if he was on the right track.

After this, he got back in his train and drove it forward, so I guess he was.

I also went over to the other side of my place and caught this interesting inversion--flowers over the sky. It's part of one of the hanging baskets that the city puts out on the quay.

And that was it for my Monday.

All the best,
Tom the Deer Stalker