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I slept in on Saturday
the 22nd of April, and so I didn't find myself ready to go chasing
birds until the afternoon. Just for a bit of a change, I decided
to head up to Maplewood in North Vancouver.
Being as it was afternoon,
and a sunny one at that, most of the small birds were having a
siesta somewhere where I'd never find them. So I wasn't too surprised
that my first encounter at Maplewood was with something fairly
large: an Osprey.
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The osprey was just
flying by, from north to south, and didn't hang around for long.
Things were quiet enough,
bird-wise, that I started taking photos of plants. Here's some
bamboo that caught my eye: first, a twisty bit of it.
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| And next,
a group of straight stalks. |
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| Over on
the west side of the preserve, there is a pond with a log in the
middle of it. Oftentimes, one can find Red-eared Sliders (turtles)
out sunning themselves there. This day was no exception. |
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The only sad thing
is that the log is far from the banks of the pond, and so I couldn't
get a closer photo.
Some flittering in
the bushes caught my attention, and following it, I found a notoriously
flittery bird: a Ruby-Crowned Kinglet.
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| After taking
several kinglet photos, I continued along the path and eventually
encountered a plant—maybe it was a tree—with bunches of
pretty little pink/red flowers. As the birding was pretty slow,
I took a few flower photos. |
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| More flittering
let me to another Ruby-crowned Kinglet. It seems that the kinglets
were the only little birds that weren't having an afternoon snooze.
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I even found a couple
more of them on my way out.
And I did leave fairly
quickly, as I had some shopping I wanted to do. After shopping,
I called my friends Annie and Derrill, and dropped by to see them
and go for a walk. It turns out that they were about to move to
a new place in a couple of days, and had most their stuff packed
up and ready to go. This would be their last walk from that particular
home to their local park, Deer Lake Park.
Most of our walk was
without incident, but on the far side of the lake we spotted a
warbler working one of the trees. We jumped a stream, tromped
a little down a small path in the woods, and eventually found
ourselves on a lawn with the warbler in a nearby tree. We had
to wait a little while for the bird to land in an unobstructed
location, but when it did, it was easy to see that we had found
a Yellow-rumped Warbler of the Audubon's subspecies. Here's two
photos of him.
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| The Yellow-rumped
was the only good bird we saw, and we made it back to the street
where Annie and Derrill live with few further photos. As we neared
their house, Derrill spotted some interesting near-sunset lighting
on some nice orange-leaved trees (maple of some sort). He took a
few photos and then I did the same. |
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We parted ways when
we got back to their home, and I went home to sort through my
very few photos from the day.
Not in a big birding
groove,
Tom
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