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On Saturday the 26th,
I got up late again, around noon. I hurried up and got out the
door as quick as I could, because time was a'wastin'. I zoomed
along, and around 1:00, I pulled over and got out.
And went to my habitual
lunch at the Golden Pita. The usual group was there, and it was
good food and good company. I enjoyed myself but left kinda quickly
(after only an hour and a half) so as to take advantage of the
sunshine I noticed on the way over.
There are a couple
of good birding places within a 5-10 minute drive of the Golden
Pita, and I decided to go to Piper Spit on Burnaby Lake, which
is one of them. The spit is always good for some waterfowl, some
ground sparrows, and a few other things.
When I got there, the
Green-Winged Teal were out and about. I was relieved to see that
they were the correct shape again; last time I was there they
were all puffed up and much more spherical.
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| My world
now felt like it was back on even kilter. I decided I'd work a little
on close-ups of some of the waterfowl. Just when I did that, guess
who popped up? |
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Why, it was Lulu, the
leucistic goose! That was a nice surprise. Lulu is an old buddy
of mine; I first sent out a photo of her in my photojournal
entry from the 26th of July, last year. As I said then, leucism
is a disorder like albinism, except that leucistic animals come
out with less pigments rather than no pigments. I've heard of
it happening in birds and in reptiles. Maybe it also happens in
other animals.
Now, I'm not really
certain if Lulu is really female, but I think she is, and she
didn't seem to mind her name.
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| I was happy
to see her back after her migration. She'd been away for quite a
long time. It seems she picked up a mate somewhere along the way,
too. Here she is with her dashing partner. |
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| We chatted
a bit, and talked about the other photographer from last time, and
had a really good visit. She wanted to go out for a swim with her
guy, so I asked her to pose for one of those close-ups I was trying
to get. She assented, so here's a close-up of her face. |
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That's a photographic
cliché, there: the reflection of the photographer showing
in the eye of the subject. I'm that little dark blob to the left
of the reflection of the sun.
So Lulu and her beau
went paddling off, and I continued taking photos of the ducks
and geese around. I got a few more Green-winged Teals, and some
more Canada Goose shots. Here's a banded Canada coming up to see
if I'm distributing any food.
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| There was
a juvenile Herring Gull a little ways out in the water. I really
like the wing patterns on these guys, and I was able to get some
good shots of the wing of this one. |
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| There were
also a few Wood Ducks around. Here's a male, standing, not floating. |
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That was about it for
the spit at the moment...a few ducks and some really good geese.
I decided to go on home. Once there, I was carrying my camera
towards my condo when I passed the passage out to the quay, and
I thought about it a second and turned around and headed out.
There was daylight left, and maybe the quay would hold something
interesting.
What I found were a
couple of black-morph Rock Doves on the roof of my building. Black-morphs
aren't that uncommon, but we do get the grey ones more often.
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| As I was
photographing them, they decided to fly. Here I got one of them. |
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| And here
I caught two. I'm not sure if it's the same two as the photo two
previous; there were actually three or four doves up there when
I arrived. |
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| I walked
around a bit and found no other subjects that interested me, until
I had decided to head in. Then I encountered this orange kitty on
the cement wall around our building. |
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| He was pretty
cooperative, so I moved in and got this shot of his face as he was
walking over to greet me. After this shot, he was too close to focus
on. |
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You can see that he's
a veteran of some tough fighting; there are scratches down both
sides of his nose.
I felt a kinship with
this guy—after all, we were both old Toms, and both pretty
handsome. He had scratches on his nose, and me, well, I like to
scratch my nose. So he seemed a fairly fitting feline to finish
my February photography with.
Astoundingly alliterate,
Tom
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