On the last day of August, I decided to head up a mountain so as to find some habitat different from the wetlands that I had been frequenting. In particular, I chose Cypress Mountain, as there are some trails on Cypress that are a local birding hotspot.

I only had the morning to work with, as I had a meeting to go to at work. I went up early to hopefully catch some nice morning light. Going up the mountain, there are several "scenic lookouts" where you can pull over and get some nice views of the area. I stopped at two or three of them to get photos.

Here's one of my favorites, a view of the North Shore Mountains. As you can see, it was a hazy day and the morning light was mostly orange.

Here's another shot to the east, with some nice backlit clouds.

From Cypress, one can also see downtown Vancouver, as shown below. The building that sticks up the most is Harbour Centre, where my employer has its second campus. (It's the building with the round top on the rectangular building, just above and left of the sun's reflection on the water.) I've previously shown a photo of the Surrey Central City tower, the third campus, and the one where I will be mainly working for at least the next two years.

After the stops at the lookouts, I drove up to the parking lot for the Cypress Mountain skiing operation, just to see what was up there. It looked like nothing much, and it was mostly in the shade, so I headed back down the mountain a little to the trailhead of the good birding trail. It's known to birders as the Cypress Works Yard, but that's really the name of the facility near the end of the road where the trailhead is.

There seemed to be a really nice system of trails there. I went across a little bridge over a tumbling mountain stream, but there were a lot of low-hanging branches over the stream which interfered with getting good photos of it. Maybe next time I'll climb down into the stream and get a better angle on it.

I went in, and chose a left turn at a T-junction, and soon encountered some other folks walking the trails. One of them told me about a bear that was supposedly just a little ways down the trail. I hurried along but found no bear.

I walked for about 25 minutes with it being pretty quiet on the birding front. Then a whole group of birds came into the trees on my left. It appeared to be a mixed group of warblers. There were one or two Black-throated Grey Warblers, a lifer for me.

That yellow spot is in front of his eye, which is black and blends into the black stripe on his head.

There was another type of warbler in the group; I think it was a Townsend's Warbler, but it was hopping around like crazy and I didn't get any good looks at it or clear photos of it. Here's a photo showing it in motion; you can tell it's definitely not a Black-throated Grey, because of all of that yellow.

Almost back at the T-junction, I heard a rap-rap-rap and looked around and found the source: a Hairy Woodpecker.

I only got in two shots before he took off.

Around this time, I also saw a white butterfly flitting along a few feet in the air. It landed several times, and I got this photo of him.

He's a Pine White. Pine Whites are supposed to be butterflies of the upper canopy, yet this guy was fluttering near the ground. Also, Pine White flight is supposed to be pretty--one of my butterfly books says that Pine Whites have probably the most beautiful flight of any butterfly. But this guy's flight was quite erratic. I suspect he was ill or injured.

Here's my favorite shot of him, just after takeoff from a rock.

The butterfly ended my photos of the morning, and I went on to work. When I got home from work, some cats were out in the courtyard, and I took a few photos of them. Here's one of Cadbury, looking determined.

So ends my August photography.

Chaser of all things that fly,
Tom