On Saturday the 14th, I started late in the morning and went over the Patullo bridge to north Surrey. I had decided to explore the riverfront there and to see if I could get any good shots of the big Canadian National train yard which is on the river between the Patullo and the Port Mann bridges. I didn't end up with any photos of the train yard, as it is mostly fenced in and I wasn't really looking to trespass. I did, however, find three parks run by the city of Surrey along the water.

The first of the parks was just a fishing dock just west of the train yard. There wasn't much to see there. Heading west from there, I passed a scrap metal recycling place, where I couldn't resist taking photos.

I liked the color and form contrasts in that one.

Continuing west, I found a park under and just to the west of the Patullo bridge. It was next to a RV/trailer park that had a convenient setup: the management office of the trailer park doubled as a pub (and as an office for a small marina).

Down by the river, a few people were sitting with their fishing poles and lawn chairs. There was a largish forlorn-looking boat over by the marina.

The Patullo is undergoing some renovations at the moment, and as part of the work they have set up a big industrial vacuum cleaner. Maybe it's to suck up any paint or metal shavings that arise as part of the work. Anyhow, the vacuum is in a fenced-off area of the park, and there's a duct for it that goes up the bridge.

That blue device at the bottom is the vacuum itself. I wouldn't want to be pushing that around the living room.

There doesn't seem to be much to this park; just a grassy hill and some riverfront. They do seem to have some fun-for-the-whole-family activities there, though; there was, for instance, clear evidence of a bookburning.

That particular part of that book seemed to be dealing with converting between metric units, such as from kilograms to grams. Heretical stuff.

A few (big) blocks further west along the river I found another city park called Tannery Park. This park was a bit more interesting than the other two; it had a protected wetland habitat and, at low tide at least, a sand bridge over to a small island. (The Fraser River is tidal throughout the Vancouver area.) I haven't been there at high tide so I don't know if the sand bridge is permanent. I walked out a little ways towards the island, but the mud was getting thin and sloppy, so I turned around. I thought about going back to my car for my Billy boots, but it was getting on towards lunchtime.

I did end up spying a Double-crested Cormorant over by the island, though. I've never seen a cormorant so far up the river before. I wasn't able to get closer because of the mud.

Tannery Park may be a good place to do some weekday birding, as it's almost on my way from my home to my new workplace.

At this point I decided to head on to lunch, but then I saw a juvenile Bald Eagle circling, and decided to try to get some pictures. A couple in a truck saw me taking photos and stopped to ask me if it was an eagle or a hawk. I think the dark head confused them--for the first three or four years, Bald Eagles have dark head feathers.

From the plumage, this one is a juvenile (first year). The wing shape, with the trailing edge of the wing almost parallel to the front edge, is more like a 4th year or adult eagle, but I think that the wing shape is being distorted a bit by the angle at which the photo was taken.

After getting a few shots of the eagle, I ended up stuck behind a train. There's a whole mess of rail lines near the river in Surrey; most of them lead to the rail bridge that's right beside the Patullo. I took a few train photos (which I won't bother you with) and then finally made it to lunch.

After lunch, I had a nap and around 7 p.m. it had cooled off a bit (it was a pretty warm day) and I headed out again. I went down to the Tsawassen ferry jetty to see if I could see some shorebirds that had turned up there. On the way, I stopped by the side of the road in Richmond and took a few landscapes in the late sun.

When I made it to the ferry jetty, it was near high tide and the Compensation Lagoon was flooded. The usual mixed flock of Caspian Terns and various seagulls was there.

Most of the terns were settling in for the night, although a few of them were still hunting.

I couldn't find any of the interesting shorebirds; it was getting too dark for me to get bird photos anyway. The sky had become interesting, so I set my tripod up to take some sunset pictures.

The tripod is necessary because getting really vivid colors and a sharp image, one needs a small apeture and long exposure times. By the end of the day I was getting exposure times of 1/2 or 1 second.

Here's a picture taken after the one above; I always find it interesting how different the colors are at the bottom or the top of a sunrise or sunset. Here I'm shooting the upper clouds, which still look daylight-white.

The rays of light streaming through the clouds are called "god rays" by photographers.

Here's a picture of a train waiting by the port.

I hope you've enjoyed today's photos.

Cheers,
Tom