There were also a few Green-winged Teal on that pond, but they all stayed far enough away that I wasn't able to get any good photos.

I headed for the intersection in the middle of the four ponds. This little family of Canada Geese must've seen me coming, because they were hightailing it down the path in front of me.

Sadly, the photo doesn't capture the real intensity of color on the water.

Looking the other way from this location, I saw that the flock of Western Sandpipers was in the air, and after weaving this way and that for a while, it settled in the corner of the northwest pond.

I completed my journey through the inner ponds by walking around the southwest pond again, where a few Westerns were foraging separate from the flock. Unfortunately, the angles I had on them were mostly eastward, which at this time of day meant facing into the sun. That's far from ideal, and I already had photos of Westerns, so I didn't try too many shots.

When I got back to my car, the park gate was open, so I drove in to the parking lot, intending to go by the outer ponds and look for Yellow-headed Blackbirds. As I headed towards the north outer pond, I encountered the following tree swallow resting on a signpost.

It's a good thing that none of those little pictures means "no perching".

Over at the northern outer pond, I found the Yellow-headed Blackbirds I was looking for. I stayed there for quite a while, just enjoying the cool sounds they make. Here's a male Yellow-headed.

I didn't get any photos of female Yellowheads. There were a few around, but they stuck mostly to parts of the marsh where there was just too much stuff in the way to get a good photo.

Also hanging out in the marsh were Red-winged Blackbirds. I got a decent close shot of a female who briefly landed on a nearby cattail.

By this time, it was about 10 o'clock, and I decided to go grab some food. I ended up calling the food "lunch", and just as it was getting used to this new name, I ate it.

It then occurred to me that I had just finished a meal, and that there is an English word, postprandial, that means "after a meal." I further remembered that most times that I've heard the word postprandial, it was in the noun phrase postprandial nap. I pondered this for a moment.

Perhaps you see where this is going.

Well, even if you didn't see where that was going, I certainly did, so I went back home and followed where my linguistic pondering had led.

A few hours later, I got up, and I checked the 'net to find that my friend Ilya had been out that morning to Queen Elizabeth Park. While there, he had seen a Nashville Warbler hanging out with a bunch of other warblers. We don't normally get Nashvilles around here, so with the late afternoon on my hands I headed over to Queen E. Park.

Queen E. Park, in Vancouver, is not to be confused with Queen's Park, in New Westminster, where I had been in my last photojournal entry.

I parked down the road a ways from the restaurant in the park, and walked towards the area where Ilya had seen the warbler. On my way, I encountered my first Green Comma of the year.

Well, I went to the area specified and searched for half an hour or so, not finding any birds except a few crows. I then remembered a time when I went to Queen Elizabeth Park last year, in the afternoon, and found nothing. Maybe the park just wasn't a good afternoon hangout for birds. So I put searching for birds on the back burner and decided to see if there was anything else photogenic around.

That turned out to be a good plan, as I soon came upon a Monkey Puzzle Tree. The branches of a Monkey Puzzle are enspiralled by thick, stiff leaves, something like the petals on a succulent. I took many different photos of the tree, and I'll show you the three that I liked the most.

Maybe he had found a woody part of the Rhodo and was chewing it up for nesting material. Whatever he was doing, he was still doing it when I turned my attention to another Rhodo a little further downhill. This one had nice white flowers, and I took advantage of the macro lens and got some close-ups of them.

All of my other lenses are zoom lenses.

A few meters down the path, I found this honeybee buzzing around a little on the ground. At first I thought it was injured and couldn't fly, because it moved only small distances, stayed on the ground, and didn't fly away from me. But then, after I took a few shots, it flew off. I guess it was okay, after all.

It was neat to find a new kind of bumble bee; I had been under the mistaken impression that we only had two types of bumble bees out here. I guess that's a result of having general insect guide books rather than the detailed scientific ones. (Although I must admit that I'm happy with the general books, in that I don't have to be handy with apid anatomical terms like gastral terga, scutum, and tegulae. And you should be happy about that, too, because if I knew that stuff, then I'd probably have to bore you with it.)

Bumble bees nest in the ground; maybe this was a queen looking for a nesting location.

My last stop of the waning afternoon was at another Rhodo, this one with lovely deep pink flowers.

That did it for my photos that day. It had been a lovely afternoon at Queen E. Park, despite the relative birdlessness. The morning hadn't been all that bad, either.

Next time I go to that park, I'll get some bird photos. I promise.

Gettin' down with the bees,
Tom