The 9th of October was a Saturday, and I slept in, had my customary long brunch in the afternoon, and then decided there wasn't enough time to do any serious shooting. Brunch often runs from 1 to 3:30 or so.

So my first time out in the field on the weekend was the 10th. I had arranged to meet my new pal Tim at Iona Beach around 9. I had met Tim at brunch a few weeks before, and he's the one that inspired me to go photograph the Mute Swans.

Well, we met at the appointed hour and went through the birder's gate over to the inner ponds. The day was a bit overcast, but there was still plenty of light.

Our day started as Iona days often do, with a Savannah Sparrow beside the dirt path..

Reaching the southwest pond, we saw that there weren't too many birds around. Those birds that were there were regulars--like this Pectoral Sandpiper.

For some reason, perhaps one to do with sewage treatment, the pond had a lot of little bubbles across much of its surface. As the sun played peek-a-boo from behind the clouds, the bubbles glinted and gave the pond surface a very shiny appearance.

Out on the pond, there was a pair of Gadwall; this photo was taken without the bright sun but you can still see how shiny the bubbles were.

I think it's just the camera angle and pose, but the male Gadwall (the one in the back) looks like he's got a huge mutant head on him to me. His head looks way bigger than the female's.

It turns out that this is a very interesting mushroom species. I spent a few hours with guide books and internet sites trying to figure out what it was, but nothing seemed to fit. Finally, I did two things: first, I sent the picture to the Vancouver Mycological Society, and second, I moved on to identify another type of mushroom, which I had taken photos of right after this one.

Well, the second type of mushroom is the Shaggy Mane, or, if you're big on dead languages, Coprinus comatus. Here's a photo of two of them all snuggled up together.

Now, in reading the description of the Shaggy Mane, I found that the bulbous shape is just the cap of the mushroom; it's hollow inside with a stalk. The underside of the cap has gills, which are ridges that go radially from the stalk to the edge of the cap. (Many mushrooms are gilled.) And furthermore, the guide book says that the white cap turns inky from liquefying gills.

In other words, the cap on this mushroom slowly turns to black goo. And since my first mushroom sure seemed to be dripping with black goo, I now suspected it was a Shaggy Mane, too. The only problem is the salmon-peach color on it wasn't mentioned in my book anywhere.

Well, I got a nice response from the mushroom club president, a fellow named Kent, who confirmed my belated hunch that my first mushroom was a Shaggy Mane. He says that the black goo contains the mushroom's spores, and that it likely gets stuck on animals or plant matter and thereby dispersed to other locations.

So the Shaggy Mane's life cycle is to grow a mushroom with a big, all-encompassing cap, then to dissolve the cap to send spores on their way. Presumably it then shrivels up and dies...I also found these mushrooms nearby, and I think they are the fully-eroded Shaggy Mane.

When fresh (like the second photo), the Shaggy Mane is edible. My guide book says they're a good substitute for asparagus, and the mushroom guy Kent says they're very tasty.

So that's neat. I didn't know that there were mushrooms that intentionally turned themselves to goo. (Yes, I know I'm going out on a philosophical limb here by assigning intent to a mushroom.)

Getting back on the 10th of October, Tim and I decided to head up to the north side of Iona Beach Park. Up that way there's a chipping plant, a place where logs and wood are turned into wood chips. It being Sunday, or for whatever reason, the plant wasn't operating, and Tim and I headed in to see if there were any good photos lurking inside.

The chipping plant consists of many big piles of wood, logs, and wood chips, with heavy machinery and parts sprinkled in. Since I like old, rusty, industrial stuff, and almost nothing there seemed new, it was a treat. First up was some of the relatively new stuff, like this log trailer.

We poked around some side passages, which were a bit like cul-de-sacs, and saw various pieces of machinery. One of my favorites was a big green steamshovel with hydraulics all over its outside. (I like complicated hydraulic stuff.) Here's a shot of the green guy; I've stylized this photo quite a bit in Photoshop (for instance, although you might not have guessed it, the steamshovel wasn't softly glowing in real life).

I was getting the feeling that they used these big machines here, but when one broke down, they would just leave it where it broke down and work around it. The frontloader had that appearance, as did the next bit of machinery, a Hyster. I'm guessing that Hyster is a type of forklift.

My companion Tim was a mining engineer and he betrayed some familiarity with Hysters.

Here we have a beautifully rusted heelboom grapple, which is used for picking up logs. Or maybe I should say, which was used for picking up logs. I liked the contrast of the shiny hydraulics with the rust on the grapple, but none of my closer-in photos of it were interesting enough. Maybe I'll get another chance to photograph it someday.

On the other side of the road, there was a bunch of old crawler track.

We continued west along the road and found the following device. Tim told me what it was, or a surmise of what it was, but I can't remember what he said. I think it's a hopper of some sort.

We had seen big piles of logs, and big piles of wood chips. Back in this area, we found a big pile of wood strips. Here is part of it, with a lovely broken blue pallet in front.

It was getting late, and I knew we had to go soon. I found two more subjects to shoot. The first was a metal claw on a weathered log pile...another interesting contrast.

And my final subject was a pile of wood chips that towered like a mountain range.

Time had indeed run short and we made our way back to our cars with no more photographic excursions. The chipping plant had given up some good photos, but I'm sure it's got plenty more...different light, like a sunny day, would yield a whole different set of interesting views. And beyond the chipping plant is the north jetty of Iona, which I've never explored. If it's anything like the south jetty, I'll have plenty to entertain me for many future trips to Iona.

Happily digging through the wood chips,
Tom