| In the late
afternoon on the 7th of March, I found myself in North Vancouver
with my camera and no further obligations for the day. I went down
towards Lonsdale Quay. I parked about two blocks up from the quay
and saw a lot of construction on my walk down the hill. Here's a
view of a lot about one block up; they've dug a big hole there,
obviously for some new building, and it looks like they've had to
route services (like water, electric, and sewer) around the pit
while they build. Or maybe the pipes and lines are just to support
construction—it could be that they have to pump water from
the bottom of the hole. Anyhow, I thought it all looked interesting,
especially with the graffitti seemingly high up on the wall. |
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| Down at
the quay, I got a few typical Vancouver marine shots. Here are a
couple of tugs, with the Vancouver skyline behind. |
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| And this
is a shot of the seabus making a crossing. The seabus is a passenger
ferry that is part of the Vancouver-area transit system. It was
a hot, bright, and somewhat hazy day. |
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| Just east
of the quay there's a new development going in; they've gutted some
big old buildings—warehouses or canneries or shipyards—and
I took the opportunity to get some photos of their insides. |
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Normally I don't do
much artsy processing and whatnot of my photos in Photoshop, but
I did on the following photo. I liked the photo, but somehow the
original just seemed to lack the right punch. So I played
with it and eventually got the following.
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| At Lonsdale
Quay proper, the St. Eval was tied up. I did a little reading
on her, and she's quite the boat. She's a 105-footer who began life
as a tugboat in Scotland in 1929, and was used to tow, amongst other
things, commercial square-riggers. She was used in WWII to
tow in torpedo-damaged ships from the English Channel. She helped
to shepherd the Queen Mary and the Britannia. In 1993
she was restored and refitted as a luxury yacht, with teak decks
and a saloon and incredibly luxurious interiors. She's flying a
B.C. flag, and I get the impression that she stays docked up this
way a lot...next time I see her I'll see if I can get aboard. |
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| The only
other thing I did at the quay was to take a few shots of the gulls
flying around. Here's a flying gull with Harbour Centre in the background. |
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| And here's
one that's just landed upon a pole. I like the way you can really
see many of the different feather groups on his wing. The layers
of feathers that you see that don't reach all the way to the back
edge of the wing are called the underwing coverts. There
are three layers of coverts, the greater, median, and lesser
underwing coverts, from longest to shortest. Here you get
a good look at the greaters and medians. The lessers are harder
to distinguish. |
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Birds have similar
layers of coverts on the top side of the wing.
That did it for my
time in North Van, and I jumped on the highway headed towards
home. There was still a little bit of daylight so I decided to
stop by Central Park in Burnaby. It was there that I found this
couple. I don't know what it is that they're looking at, and they
seemed so peaceful that I didn't want to break the spell by asking.
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| Here's the
goose from the other side. |
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That did it for the
light, though.
Two days later, on
the 9th, I had time for only a few photos, and decided to head
for the quay in front of my condo. I snuck out my door around
6 pm and found, to my surprise, a Varied Thrush on a tree in the
courtyard. I'd never seen one of these guys so close to home before.
It was dark enough that I needed a bit of flash to pick up his
colors.
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| Out on the
quay, the light was quickly fading, and I took a few sunset-themed
photos. Here's one of the boatyard across the river. I like the
pink sky and light-green water. |
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| And then
there's this thing, which I think is part of a sawmill. Maybe it
stacks or loads trucks with wood chips. It's now a little later
and the sky has turned orange. |
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March had started slowly
for me, but it was not to stay that way. Tune in next time for
photos from a long day chasin' birdies.
Endlessly sortin' through
my photos,
Tom
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