Sunday the 22nd of August started like an ordinary day.

In other words, I got up and headed out to Boundary Bay to find shorebirds and photograph them. My first stop was "the Mansion", a large house out by the dyke. To get to the mansion, one has to drive along the dyke for a short ways. Most of the dyke is a public recreational path and vehicles are not allowed on it, but this part of the dyke is a road that, amongst other things, leads to the driveway of the mansion and to the pumping station next to it.

When I arrived, I found several species of shorebirds, including both types of yellowlegs. Here they are--the front one (rightmost) is a Greater Yellowlegs, and the middle one (right behind the Greater) is a Lesser Yellowlegs..

It's often challenging to identify shorebirds, especially in photos. Below I've got two birds, and can't 100% identify either of them. The front bird is probably a Stilt Sandpiper, although he could be a Pectoral Sandpiper. The rear bird is either a Lesser or a Greater Yellowlegs, but based on the size vis-a-vis the sandpiper I think it's a Greater. Yellowlegs are in a different genus (Tringa) than the Stilt and Pectoral (Calidris).

(Update: Ilya Povalyaev, a local birder, confirms that this is a Stilt and a Greater. He also corrected my misidentification of the birds in the first photo; I had originallly said that both in-focus birds were Greaters.)

Now, the following guy is definitely a Lesser, based on the length of his bill relative to the size of his head. It looks like he's caught a little something to eat.

Also enjoying the Mansion's ambience were some Long-billed Dowitchers. The left three birds are the dowitchers, and the bird on the right is a Greater Yellowlegs. It's hard to see well because of the flattened perspective, but that yellowlegs is a bit larger than the dowitchers.

As you can probably tell from the photos, it was an overcast day, but a light one, not a dark one. The Mansion didn't hold much more, so I got in my car and headed west along Ladner Trunk Road. A little ways along I turned south to get back to the dyke, by the old airport.

Here's a shot of how it looked when I got to the dyke. What this photo doesn't show is the howling wind.

Athough it looks almost like half-sunken hay bales in the bay, those are actually little spots where grass is growing. It seems odd to me that the sides of each of the patches of grass are vertical. I would expect the grass to grow diagonally outwards from the sides, forming a proper clump.But no--that grass is misbehaving.

There were a few Baird's Sandpipers at this location, near the dyke. They were my first black-legged shorebird of the day.

There was one neat thing about the stiff wind. Barn Swallows were out in large numbers, chasing bugs through the air. Normally, Barn Swallows move way too darned fast to get a good picture of them in flight. These ones were still were moving fast, but that was windspeed. Since they were flying against the stiff wind, that meant that their groundspeed was moderately slow, and with a little practice and a little luck I could follow them with my camera. So here's a usually-not-so-easy-to-obtain picture of a Barn Swallow in flight.

I had to apply a fair whack of processing to that photo to get the bird to stand out. I painted a mask for the bird and sharpened him, and then I applied a couple of different blurs to the background. The original background had very sharp water highlights which were competing with the bird for attention. Blurring made them sit back a bit more.

Once again I got in my car. This time I headed around to the south side of the Bay, to the town of Crescent Beach, wherein lies the park known as Blackie Spit. There I went to check the sheltered part of the bay, and on the way I found some Gaillardia (a.k.a. Blanket Flowers). Here's one that's being visited by a bee.

It was a delight to find such colorful flowers after spending the morning looking at the washed-out blues, browns, and blacks of an overcast day on the bay.

On a little piece of land in the bay, there were a bunch of Greater Yellowlegs. The ones I had seen earlier were quite active, but these guys just wanted to rest.

Heading out towards the point, I snapped a few pictures of some Ring-Billed Gulls. If you look closely, you can maybe see his red orbital ring (a bit of red coloration just at the edge of his eyeslits)..Several species of gulls have a red orbital ring, but some have purplish, yellowish, or pinkish orbital rings.

Rounding the point, I came upon a Common Loon who was fairly close to shore.

I wanted to get Loon's-eye-level photos, as I knew the earlier ones (like the ones above) would be very much downward-angle photos. So I got on my knees and took some shots, but that wasn't comfortable and it was still too downwards. Then I went whole hog and lied down on the beach, head towards the ocean. Let me tell you, it just doesn't feel right to be on one's belly and tilted down towards the water. I prefer lying with head firmly above feet when I'm at the beach.

With one eye watching the waves to be sure I and my camera didn't get soaked, I took several photos.. Here's one of them, where I caught the loon and another one that had shown up while I was shooting.

I didn't get soaked by waves, but the beach was a bit wet, so I ended up with a cold and wet-in-spots t-shirt.

It was a quarter to two in the afternoon already, so I decided to have lunch in Crescent Beach. I had some fish without the chips and then drove back towards home in New Westminster. I decided to stop at the local Army & Navy to look at their tents (I was thinking of getting a tent to use as a bird blind). I parked in back of the A&N, across Front Street from their back entrance.

I didn't get a tent. When I got back to my car, though, I noticed a small flock of birds on the railroad tracks, bushes, and fence in front of me. I pulled out my camera and headed over to them (checking for trains first, of course). They were House Sparrows.

Here's a male, who was sitting on the railroad track. He's got some worn feathers and some already replaced by his fall colors. He sang a note or two; I think it was the opening part of "I've been working on the railroad..."

I was tired, though, and didn't give it the full photo treatment that I would have if I had encountered it earlier in the day.

Coming up next time...no shorebirds!

Your not-so-common loon,
Tom