Burnaby Lake is my happy place. I have an almost mystical connection to the birds here, which swim right up to the edge of the dock so you can photograph them up-close. I have never seen pintails in any of the other places I birdwatch. I also see sandhill cranes, dowitchers (sandpipers with longer legs), wood ducks, escaped white domestic ducks and doves who use the lake as a kind of sanctuary, and even the elusive Mandarin duck, which is so rare it made the local news.
It can all make me forget, for a while, the things I'm dealing with right now, including intractible physical pain which I can't talk to my doctor about. I have been dismissed, ignored and told to run along, go home and behave myself, so many times over the years that I have pretty much given up trying. This is how people become addicted to bootleg pain meds cut with fentanyl, but I hope I never get to that point. It's too bad when the "cure" is potentially worse than the disease.
But until I go crazy with the pain and find a way to end it for good, I have my birds.
Goslings, goslings everywhere! They were peepin' and cheepin' on our last visit to Burnaby Lake. Several Canada goose families were massed together, and the fuzzybutts had taken over the place. It's common to see goslings at many different stages of development, and one even looked like it was right out of the egg. There's also a magical moment when two gorgeous male red-winged blackbirds swoop down to eat out of my hand.
Yet another magical afternoon on Burnaby Lake. Paloma, the white dove who has chosen a pigeon as her mate, still hangs around, but she does look uncomfortable. There were several doves hanging around the dock, in fact, all banded, so they were likely domestic birds that escaped or (I hope not!) were released In fact, I swear I saw BLACK doves as well as white, though I've never heard of such a thing.
The thing is, people now do "dove releases" at weddings and other events, and though they're marginally better than the balloon releases that leave TONS of slimy latex choking the waterways every year, there must be at least a few doves who lose their way and never come back. Like this one. I do wonder how long she will survive in a wild setting, even with a male pigeon protecting her.
We have seen white barnyard ducks at the Burnaby Lake dock - three, then two, then one, then none - as predators picked them off for an easy meal (domestic birds not being street-smart like their wild counterparts). And then there was Bosley the magpie duck, who survived for many years in Lake Lafarge before being killed by a predator, along with his mate Belinda.
Paloma, the pure white dove, has been appearing on the dock at Burnaby Lake for months now. We sometimes see domestic birds among the wild flocks (we even saw three white barnyard ducks - then two - then one - then - ). Domestic birds have no street smarts, and though the flock may protect them for a while, sooner or later they're caught by predators and devoured. A pure white bird such as this one is an obvious target. In this video, it appears Paloma has found a mate among the pigeons.
The blackbirds are back! Actually, they've never been away, but that day they were "biting" as never before, devouring seeds which they shelled in a split-second. We also saw gorgeous pintails, as well as teal, coots, mallards, wood ducks, and the inevitable honking, aggressive Canada geese. My backyard birds are a constant source of wonder, and Bentley has taken to watching them from the window, leaping up every once in a while as the house finches fight over the window feeder. The finches have taken over the yard, and there are so many of them at the feeders (mostly females) that we have to assume it's nesting time and they need the food for their young. Our big old cedar tree is a kind of highrise for bird species and fat (pregnant and nursing) squirrels. We've even seen a mama squirrel flattening herself down on a cement block to keep her supposedly-weaned babies from nursing. All this has been here all the time, and I never saw it. Makes me wonder about other things I don't see.
This lovely domestic white dove has joined the flock of wild pigeons on Burnaby Lake. Originally we saw TWO white doves, and I swear I saw two black ones, though I didn't think that kind of domestic dove came in black. Now there is but one, but she is VERY popular among the male pigeons, who do their absurd strutting courtship rituals around her: puffing out their neck so that it looks huge, circling around and around their quarry and even spinning in circles to get her attention. Because all those ploys didn't work and Paloma just blew them off, one of the males gave her an aggressive peck. Pigeons! She just not that into you.
As I attempted to feed a lovely white dove which has taken up residence at the dock on Burnaby Lake, GEESE muscled in from every side - big, fat, honking, pooping, hissing, running-at-you Canada geese. Not my favorite bird. The dove was undoubtedly a domestic bird which had escaped, and was even banded. We remembered seeing four of them originally - two white and two black. I do not see how anyone could abandon birds that beautiful, and their chances of surviving in the wild are close to nil. Once we even saw, incredibly, a small flock of white domestic ducks bobbing around amidst the mallards. Then we saw three. . .then two. . . then one. . . and now we don't see them at all. Domestic birds do not have sharp enough survival instincts and are not bonded to the flock sufficiently to survive even in these semi-tame environs, where people constantly come to photograph them and feed them by hand.
Bird-watching can be very hit-or-miss. One day birds show up in noisy droves, challenging your ability to even get them into camera range, and the next they just seem to disappear. Species come and go in my own back yard with dizzying frequency. Right now it's house finches, black-headed grosbeaks, nuthatches and chickadees, though the odd rogue towhee shows up to hop back and forth scratching for bugs.
The larger birds, the Steller's jays, ravens and flickers, are nowhere to be seen, though we do see a downy woodpecker now and then, hammering away at suet. Likewise, the places we go to birdwatch vary wildly in what they present to us. This sandhill crane chick was such a gift, and the blackbirds swooped down on me relentlessly, jabbing their needle beaks into the palm of my hand as they greedily devoured black oil sunflower seeds.
But aside from those two, all we seemed to have were obnoxious Canada geese in their dozens, if not hundreds. I've seen so many species at Burnaby Lake, including the rare mandarin duck, as well as ringnecks, scaups, wood ducks, teals, and God knows what else that I can't remember just now. But the geese appear to have taken over. You can tell by the massive poops on the dock, as large and foul as dog shit.
Will the rest of them be back? That's up to the birds, who are so "flocky" that no one can really predict their ways. Today I walked around Como Lake and was heartened to see several duck families with ducklings of different ages, some drakes having a bachelor party, and MANY Canada geese, which were behaving very strangely indeed.
They were all in the water, at least two dozen of them, and suddenly they all started running along on the surface of the water - all in one direction. HOW can a bird as heavy and "breasty" as a Canada goose RUN on the water? But I saw their feet! They kept doing this, not preparing for takeoff but just skidding along in unison, looking utterly ridiculous, while I tried to take a video of it (it was too far away to film properly). Then they started splashing violently, dunking themselves, and dabbling so deep that their huge webbed feet flailed wildly in the air.
But the thing of it is - last time we went to Como, maybe a couple of weeks ago, I don't think we saw any ducks or geese there at all. The place seemed deserted. I'm still not seeing my beloved diving birds, coots, hooded mergansers, Northern shovellers, and the cormorants that used to show up in the "duck park" (Lafarge Lake). The lagoon, which has in the past displayed red-tailed hawks, sandhill cranes, mergansers of every stripe, and even SWANS (and just once, an otter), seems completely dead right now. WHERE IS EVERYONE??
I don't know how many times I've been convinced my bird-watching days are over, when everyone just takes off somewhere and the lakes are virtually vacant. Will this teach me patience? Probably not, because a blank lake makes me bleak.
But being so flocky, these creatures think with a single mind, so whatever the flock leader wants to do (and who knows how THIS gets sorted out), the rest of the birds either follow, or quickly die due to the lack of protection from predators. This is, unfortunately, what happened to my beloved Bosley and his companion, Belinda. I tell myself it's all part of nature, but so am I, so I can't help feeling the loss.
From the time it first happened, it has always seemed magical to me that blackbirds fly down to eat out of your hand at Piper Spit, the dock on Burnaby Lake. I've even had a bird in each hand, but this time they took turns, not always graciously. I've never seen so many of them at one time, all of them greedy to be fed. For months I've noticed this flock, juvenile males who were probably hatched last spring, and they were too shy to come down, though they did take an interest. They seem to like to mass in a clump of bushes near the entrance of the dock, and even if you can't see them, you can hear that exquisite song. And when people walk by, they don't fly away. They know a good thing when they see it! But with the capricious habits of birds, we may not see them again until next spring.
Wild goose stampede! For reasons unknown, a large group of geese encompassing three or four families began to run away in terror. Or maybe they were running TO something? Whatever it was, it must have been good (or bad). I wish I had managed to capture more than half a minute of this, but as usual I was focused on something else. I took this footage at Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake, my current favorite place to goose-watch.
This is some footage of pigeons I took at Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake, our favorite place to bird-watch. The pigeons are at it full-force, and it's quite funny to watch. The video has a little gap in the middle where I forgot to turn the recorder off.
Pigeon Love (Wikipedia)
Courtship rituals can be observed in urban parks at any time of the year. The male on the ground or rooftops puffs up the feathers on his neck to appear larger and thereby impress or attract attention. He approaches the hen at a rapid walking pace while emitting repetitive quiet notes, often bowing and turning as he comes closer.
At first, the female invariably walks or flies a short distance away and the male follows her until she stops. At this point, he continues the bowing motion and very often makes full- or half-pirouettes in front of the female. The male then proceeds to feed the female by regurgitating food, as they do when feeding the young.
The male then mounts the female, rearing backwards to be able to join their cloacae. The mating is very brief with the male flapping his wings to maintain balance on top of the female.
One wonders, given the fact that actual mating takes only a few seconds, why there has to be such a prolonged, elaborate mating ritual. I suppose there's a parallel in human beings, where "love makes the world go 'round", songs are all about "love" (banging, usually), and - aside from industry - sex seems to be not just the main thing, but the only thing. (Come to that, it is also an industry in itself.) What I have long wondered is this: since birds were directly descended from dinosaurs, did dinosaurs have similar elaborate rituals to attract a mate? Did T-Rex perform pirouettes and coo softtly so he could get it on with a girl T-Rex? How about Tricerotops? Did it throw up in another Tricerotops' mouth to charm and beguile? And how noisy would all this be? I have always thought of the dinosaur-scape as deafeningly loud, as each creature bellows with gigantic vocal cords to communicate. But this. The thuds on the ground! It would be like an earthquake.
The first time a blackbird flew down to eat out of my hand at Burnaby Lake, my hair stood on end (figuratively speaking). From the time I was a little girl, I longed to have a bird light on my hand, and I even used to stalk them, wondering why they always flew away. A mean neighbor kid said I could catch a bird if I put salt on its tail, and I literally went tromping around with a salt shaker in my hand for the longest time. I also took home baby birds I found on the ground, which I now realize was a mistake: in many cases the parent birds are still feeding them. I've seen nearly-full-grown crows screaming after their parents, still wanting a handout. The birds I took home nearly always died, or were so close to being adults that they just flew away on their own.
But birds.
I lost my beloved Paco a couple of years ago, and it still hurts. How it hurts. The bond between bird and human isn't understood unless you have it. Most people say it's "only a bird". Now that we know more about the intelligence of ravens and crows, attitudes are changing. Paco was a sweetheart, a violet-blue lovebird who at only a few weeks old was highly sociable and smart. Then, only a few weeks in, I found her dead in her cage.
Losing Paco led indirectly to gaining Bentley, but our attachment to Bentley was amplified, I am sure, by the loss of Paco. Bentley, too, came from a difficult background. No one quite knows the extent of the trauma, but I am sure he would have died had someone not rescued him in time. Covered with dog bites and nearly emaciated, he was found wandering around Surrey, the toughest neighborhood in the lower mainland. He had no tattoo, no chip, nothing to identify him, but he clearly wasn't feral. Once he recovered he turned out to be a wonderful pet. His loyalty and protectiveness towards us is a palpable thing. He is simply dear.
But these, my wild birds, I still have. It was a delight when the first bird of spring descended. Over the winter we kept hearing the delightful ker-squeege of their song high in the bushes, but no birds ever came down. The ones I saw up there looked immature. Even now they are still a little shy of full adulthood, their feathers a bit mottled with juvenile camouflage. The big, lusty males of last summer must be off nesting somewhere.
These are a comfort to me, because to be honest, I have lost so much over the past several years that I can't begin to count the blows. I am sort of afraid of totting it all up. Some of it was stuff or people I had to walk away from, because it or they had become suffocating. Some was simply taken from me. Life is about loss, no matter what our shallow, striving, materialistic culture might think (if you can attribute thinking to it at all).
You don't try to get it back, and there are no compensations. Not really. You just keep going, and going, into the unknown.
My nature photogaphy has improved. A lot. At first it was nothing but a shaky blur. (Mind you, I constantly see YouTube videos with a million and a half views which are dark, shaky, and totally incoherent.) It's easier with closeups, of course, though I am not particularly close to these birds. The ones I really want to capture are on Lafarge Lake. We once saw THREE types of mergansers in one day (common, red-breasted and hooded), but I got no more than two or three seconds of focused footage surrounded by shaky, blurry, tilty, finger-covered crap. Since I haven't figured out how to edit these (and it was not long ago I had never even held a camera, so one step at a time), I can't post those. The mergansers hang out in the middle of the lake, so focusing on them is murder. You have to smoothly pan the camera ahead of the bird so that it continually swims into the frame. Otherwise you'll lose it. Mergansers swim like crazy, but they are so breathtaking that I will keep on trying.
Another magic moment at Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake. Most of the birds have gone "elsewhere", for some reason (the Canada Day long weekend?), which was a big disappointment. I didn't get to see my gorgeous, majestic sandhill cranes, no wood ducks, no ducklings or goslings, etc. But the blackbirds were out in force, and hungrier than ever. Now that I know I am permitted by the Park Board to feed the birds off the pier, I feel I can do so with a clear conscience. And here they are!
I love making gifs, in full knowledge that they don't always run so well. They can be slow or jerky for the first thirty seconds or so when you open a post, but normally they resolve - or at least, they do for me. For you, they may not be jerky at all, I hope.
Lately I've been able to make some really beautiful ones from our Burnaby Lake visits. I've found a new program - Imgur - well, until IT stops working too, as they all do. Imgur works well and makes some huge gifs, but is very very slow and it's hard to save them. I'm not sure why that is. I use another one called Giphy that takes about thirteen seconds to make a beautiful gif, but it can only be from a short video, and a maximum of ten seconds long. Imgur is more like fifteen. But then, that's not important - is it? All that matters is getting them up here, a few seconds of magic time seen over and over again.
Some people say they hate gifs, and I do too, the two-second ones that are supposed to be funny. They are awful. People with the right equipment can make one-minute ones, but why don't I see them anywhere?
That gorgeous alpha male red-winged blackbird just swooped down on me unbidden, but after he finally left, THIS gorgeous creature came along. Looking it up, I found out it was a female red-winged blackbird, explaining her boldness. It's hard to describe her beauty, as her feathers were shot through with gold.
Now here's a nice little sequence! Though if you watch carefully, the male actually waited until the female flew away. Or so it appears - unless she saw him coming - but that's not likely, because he flew up behind her. May I say once more - I have NEVER fed wild birds, and don't believe in feeding wildlife, but in my old age I have become weak, and there is a dire shortage of magic in my life now that my backyard birds have fled. An excuse, no doubt.
These sandhill cranes are mystical creatures, and they love to hang around the docks, hoping to be fed like all these birds. We usually see a mated pair, but this looks to be a smaller bachelor male (note the red mask). I just keep waiting for the pair to return with a fuzzy crane chick. If that happens, oh God, the gifs, the GIFS!!
POST-IT NOTE: Sometimes I think the gifs have to go through one entire (in this case, 15-second) cycle to run properly. But how do I know? All I know is that they DO run properly eventually, but if they're slow and jerky it takes forever to run through that first cycle. Just keep watching, they'll move. These are some of the nicest gifs I've ever made. Just little packages of magic.
Later identified as a tree swallow, but can't they come up with a more lyrical name than that?! This guy's song was intoxicating. Like all the birds at Piper Spit, he's too tame for his own good, and I know I'm not helping matters with my handfuls of seeds. But what can I say? I'm weak, and short on magic moments in my life. I have NO birds in my back yard all, and barely any squirrels, though last year it was just teeming out there. Don't know why. Even took down the new bird house in case they thought it was a predator (like those plastic owls you see). And our former favourite haunt, the "duck park" at Lafarge Lake, is being bulldozed to make way for a Nazi-like cement amphitheatre (just the name has Third Reich connotations to me - like something from Hitler's proposed monstrous empire, Germania). We may never get that lake back, but now we have this.
I can't describe to you the feeling of having this handsome devil fly right down to me without any prompting. I know I shouldn't be feeding him, but I am. I'm tired of feeling like an evil human being. I need my moments of utter magic, and I find so many of them in this magical place.
I was astounded when this guy flew right down to me. Obviously he has no fear, which is not the best thing for him. But it's the best thing for me. He is magnificent and he knows it!
