Why is this OK? Because it's not.

 NOTE: This appeared on my Facebook page today. I really think I shouldn't use social media at all, as it seems to take me to a place I don't want to go. No one reads it anyway, do they? But today some shit went down that I really needed to write about, for myself if for no one else. 

I don’t usually post rants on social media, but something happened today that I have to report on. We love to walk around Como Lake in Coquitlam, an urban park full of wildlife and old guys fishing and young kids prancing around and people just generally strolling along in the peace and quiet. But when we arrived for our usual peaceful stroll, I heard this godawful noise – a loud, harsh, sustained buzz, even more irritating than those awful drone sounds – and then I saw this streak of “something” speeding over the water, so fast I could barely take it in.

I had never seen a model/remote control boat move that fast, rocketing from one side of the lake to the other and making a sound so loud you could not tune it out. Four guys were sitting on the shore on lawn chairs taking turns operating this thing, chuckling and guffawing away like 8-year-olds doing something naughty – but it got worse. The guy taking his turn at the controls ran the model boat right up behind a Canada goose which was sitting peacefully in the water, perhaps even asleep. It startled and took off a nanosecond before the evil thing hit it.

 I strode up to the giggling group of grown men and said, “I’m going to report you for this. You’re harassing the wildlife in a public park, and that is NOT allowed.” The guy looked a tiny bit sheepish and said, “OK, I won’t do it again.” (I think he had been doing it for some time.) But I had more to say. “The geese are nesting right now. They’re vulnerable. This is a safe place for them, a sanctuary. This (and I began to cry) HURTS me to see.” The sheepish guy sort of mumbled a half-assed apology, then went right back to assaulting the lake and all the rest of us with  the noise and the hurtling speed.

Every once in a while the thing wiped out, spun around in the water and then reversed direction. It was going at such high speed it was literally flying above the surface of the water, so what would happen if it really flew out of control and hit someone? The geese weren’t the only ones in danger – there was a group of old men trying to fish and have a nice social gathering, and the atmosphere was completely ruined. 

Bill was so upset he stalked off, but I ran into another trailwalker who told me they had  actually covered up the prominent sign saying, “WARNING: No motorized craft or remote control models allowed” with a COAT. No kidding, so they think if the sign is covered up it’s okay? The trailwalker and I commiserated for a while, then I noticed the racket had suddenly stopped, and a few minutes later the four idiots had vacated, but left the coat (a child’s coat, which they had probably found lying on the trail) hanging over the sign. I took it down and tacked it up on a neutral area, thinking maybe someone would come back for it.

But I was astonished at the – what? Why is it OK for a model craft hurtling along at incredible speed to take a run at a living creature? Isn’t this lovely urban park something of a sanctuary for the birds? This particular lake attracts whole colonies of Canada geese, and soon we’ll be seeing plump fuzzy goslings floating around in the lake. I have no doubt these guys would love to take out a gosling or two, or maybe even the whole brood. If I ever see those bozos again I will report them, or maybe I should report them right now.

 I don’t want to be a complainer, and there’s too much ranting going on in the world right now, but this was atrocious behaviour in so-called grown men. I suppose the rest of the time they’re out in the woods bringing down elk and deer with rifles, drinking beer and guffawing at the sight of a magnificent animal sinking to its knees, shot dead.

A Festival of Cormorants on Como Lake

A glorious day on Como Lake. We're always astounded to see ONE cormorant there, as lakesides are not this species' preferred location. They're shore birds whose massive wingspan you can see from a mile away. The lake is stocked, so I think this small flock came for an easy meal. They like to hold their wings up, either to sun them, dry them or just give them a stretch.

This day there were FIVE of them roosting on a single log. One seemed to have a bit of fishing line on it, but I hoped it wasn't doing any damage. Birds are such mysterious creatures! Every time we go anywhere to birdwatch, it's a different experience.

I saw a large brown duck with NINE ducklings at the end of the summer - the wrong time to hatch out your young, but there they were. This duck was, I believe, a khaki Cam pbell, a large domestic bird raised for meat. It must have escaped the barnyard and mated with a wild mallard, as the babies were an interesting hybrid of fluffy yellow and mallard-ish mottled brown. Then, all at once, they disappeared, and I have never seen them again.

But who knows. . . one day, months from now, we may see half-grown, multicolored ducklings in the lake. Or not. Were they some wild predator's easy meal? Even crows have been known to swoop down on ducklings and carry them off. But we've seen domestic birds - many times - in semi-wild settings like this.

We saw five white domestic ducks at Burnaby Lake, along with several gorgeous doves, but like the others, the numbers dwindled and they eventually disappeared. We also followed two large domestic ducks, likely a mated pair, for several years, before they also vanished, likely eaten by predators. All part of nature, where bird eats bird, but hair-raising nonetheless.

💀SUPER-CREEPY! SKULL FACE appears on fallen log💀

Strange are the things I find on my walks around Como Lake. Even stranger is the fact that this is the first time I noticed it, though I've been walking around the lake for at least five years.

💥💎Diamonds on the Water💎💥

A dazzling moment on Como Lake.

Dreamy ducks: reflections on the lake

This is one of my loveliest duck videos from Como Lake. Pure poetry on the water. Being in nature is the one thing keeping me more-or-less sane during these unbalanced, unbelievable times. 

This crow is completely CRAZY!

The crow I recently encountered on Lafarge Lake was acting very strangely. It was standing on the banks rattling its beak menacingly, and raucously cawing its head off. Periodically he (she? I can't really tell them apart) would charge at one of the mallards which was peacefully sitting at the lakeside. I've never seen behaviour like that before. If it were nest-guarding, which crows are notorious for doing, I think it would have been dive-bombing me and all the other (many) passersby in the park. But he just stood there, sometimes strutting back and forth, making the loudest, ugliest crow sounds I have ever heard.

The ducks, strangely enough, stood their ground. One was scared into the water, but after that, they stood or sat stodgily, as if to say, we won't tolerate this interloper. Ducks are placid, but they also have a certain gravitas. They are not easily perturbed. Any goose would have made short work of this crow, lowering its neck, hissing and charging at him, but the ducks just had a sort of "we shall not be moved" attitude.

But why try to scare off ducks? How could a duck ever reach a crow's nest, and what sort of interest would it have even if it could? There are plenty of ground-dwelling predators capable of climbing trees and picking off tender crow fledglings. Raccoons, skunks, weasels and ferrets, even squirrels have been known to raid nests. And let's not start on the eagles, hawks and falcons, and even the owls which could easily swoop down and snatch a whole nest.

But this crow was attacking ducks. Placid mallards which didn't want their afternoon snooze disturbed. Ducks who were just waiting for the next handout, the inevitable, forbidden tourist-feed. 

I had a passing thought that the crow was injured, but he seemed so able-bodied, so muscular and glossy (thus my use of "he", though I could be wrong) that it didn't make sense. He did not stir from the banks in all the time we spent at the lake, photographing Bosley and Belinda, our favorite duck couple. When we left, he was still cawing raucously and walking back and forth. Strutting, rather, aggressively. My only conclusion is that he saw birds, and birds meant threat, so he was going to get rid of them forthwith. 

Hybrid lovers

Hot pursuit

Bosley and Belinda, the Romeo and Juliet of Como Lake, get a lot of play on my YouTube channel. I've started editing the videos and setting them to music (though this one isn't - I didn't want to drown out the quacks and splashes). Belinda suddenly appeared in the spring, a medium-sized duck who was obviously a hybrid, with her cocoa-brown-and-white feathers, green bill and curlicue tail. But she has grown to near-gargantuan proportions, dwarfing even her goose-sized boy friend, Bosley. Our hope is that these two will stay together and produce ducklings in the spring. Oh joy - ducklings from Bosley and Belinda! I'd be tempted to take one home with me. But I won't.

This is a mini-drama in which Belinda decides she needs a little "me time", and swims off in a distant direction. It takes Bosley a minute to wonder where she is, but then he literally runs to the water and takes off after her.

Love.

A duck's ass

There was this duck, see, and all I could see was its ass. It went on that way for a long time, so I filmed some of it. The duck's feet were coming right up out of the water, a strange sight, so its bill must have been touching the lake bottom. As humourous as all this is, it's a sign of something not-so-funny, and we all know what it is. Climate change affects everything, from falling lake levels to tropical storms, not to mention forest fires. We separate them out, push them away from us - because don't we have to laugh, once in a while? Especially when a duck keeps showing its ass.

Mystery in the lake

Another mystery bird, seen on Como Lake. It was at such a distance that I could not zoom in without becoming extremely wobbly. I'd say merganser, but the head isn't right. Loon? It has a distinctive patch of white on its head, and loons have white throats, don't they? I am extremely new at this bird thing, but it lends a sense of wonder to each new discovery. I always think the bird is somehow aware of me filming it by the way it keeps turning its head.

As usual, YouTube gave me the shittiest choice of thumbnails ever, so I had to come up with my own. I found a picture of a loon and used a glass filter to blur it, then realized that if you look at the image the other way, it's a bit like a gull or other large bird flying against a blue sky with a dark cloud above it. All right, so the cloud is brown! It was an unintentional optical illusion which has nothing to do with the video.

Hybrids in love

The continuing saga of Bosley, the magpie duck/mallard hybrid, who has finally found love in Belinda - another hybrid. At least, we're pretty sure, with her pied markings and flipped-up tail. And she has a green bill, which I've never heard of! Every time we go to Como Lake, we see the two of them together, but there is always a third presence - a mallard drake who just hangs around them. At one point, he seemed very attached to Bosley and even chased him all over the park, while Bosley ran in terror. Is this a romantic duck triangle, or what?

Our miracle duck has found a mate!

Bosley, the magpie duck/mallard hybrid of Como Lake, has had an interesting summer. We almost always see this handsome, friendly guy dabbling along the shore or waddling around, fat as a goose. But then he disappeared for weeks, and we were very worried. Finally we saw him frantically running towards the lake, a mallard drake in hot pursuit. We were a bit shocked, but thought, well, maybe Bosley is a Boslina. Another time, we saw him chilling in the reeds with what looked like the same drake. What was going on?

Then the other day, an amazing development: Bosley appears with a completely different duck, which also looks like a hybrid. She (for it must be a she) is white with creamy-tan markings, a cocoa-brown head and neck, and a white ring where a mallard's neck-ring would be. She has the ruffly wing-feathers and tail-curlicue of a magpie duck, and her long bill, very strangely, is green.

Trust Bosley to pick a true exotic. I don't know if these two will produce young, but I hope so. Oddly enough, a lone male mallard is still hanging around with them, and I can't tell if it's the same one as before.

A threesome? What can it mean?

Duckling challenge!

I think this is one of the best videos I've taken. Seven ducklings were faced with an impossible challenge, but somehow managed to brave it and win. 

This has been a tremendous year for ducklings and goslings, and new batches/hatches are still appearing. Many of the goslings are now plug-ugly, in that awkward middling stage, looking like plucked chickens on stilts. You can see where the Ugly Duckling story came from, for swan cygnets are probably much the same, with a lumpy, ungainly, protracted adolescence. 

Swans may look pretty, but their temperaments are quite ugly, worse than the Canada goose with its haughty stares, stiff necks and hisses. Give me the humble duck any time. Ducks always seem to be smiling, and it's rare to find a mean one anywhere. Mother ducks will drive off threats fiercely, but their constant maternal murmuring keeps the babies within their radar. Had I been raised by a duck (or a cat, for that matter - cats make tender and attentive mothers), things might have turned out very differently for me.

Bosley's great adventure!

Bosley is the name we gave to a very strange duck who lives with a flock of mallards in Como Lake. We kept wondering why a very large, piebald duck would hang around with wild birds like that. He looked more like a domestic duck than a wild one. Finally, unable to get any information about him, I sent a gif of him swimming to the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, one of the world's foremost institutions of aviana/birdology.

They got back to me right away, to my surprise, telling me that their best guess is that he's a hybrid of a mallard and a magpie duck, a large-ish domestic duck raised for meat. (See example below). It made sense. These ducks are black-and-white, whereas Bosley's markings have the mottled brown tones of a mallard - in particular, a female.

So it shouldn't have surprised us to see a male mallard chasing after her. She was waddling around on land - the first time we've seen her (him? Still not sure) do that. We've been watching her for a couple of years now, and it's amazing how we see her almost every time we visit.  Once when all the mallards had flown away, we saw him (her?) in the very middle of the lake, dabbling and paddling around alone.

I can see why one of Bosley's parents would want to run away from home if he or she were about to become dinner. But it is obvious this is a true adoption. I mean, if the rest of the flock wants to mate with you. . .  The mallard drake might have been pursuing (her) romantically, or chasing (him) off as a rival. But now that I look at that mottled brown breast, I seriously wonder if Bosley is really a Boslette.

It's a funny video, and unique among all our Bosliana.

BLOGGER'S FOOTNOTE. I found a very strange group of pictures of ducks very similar to Bosley (see example, above) - only they were even more mallardy (or mallardly) than our Bos. I say more mallardly because some of them even had the iridescent green heads of the mallard drake. This was on a duck forum of some kind, and everyone took a guess at what kind of ducks these were. They came up with half a dozen names of very exotic-sounding purebred breeds. Fuck, guys! These are bastard pretenders, the love children of two duck species, and you cannot admit it because mallards are just too common. They're like pigeons, really. Only little kids like them.

And magpie ducks.

Are these magpie/mallard hybrids?

"Thank God he's alive!"

Our old friend Bosley the (former) Mystery Duck is alive and well! He disappeared over the worst of the winter, along with most of the mallards. Now he's back, fat and happy. His markings are so strange and ornate that we keep thinking there are more like him, but we've never been able to pin it down.

I was so curious about this duck that I sent a gif of him to the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and asked if they would try to identify it. I was amazed to get a prompt reply. They believe he is a hybrid of a domestic fowl called a magpie duck, raised for meat, and one of the more promiscuous mallards in Como Lake.

His featherings are exotic, and because of that, and his sheer size, he sticks out like a sore duck thumb, but we love him. It's his loyalty, I think. He and the mallard flock are closely bonded. No doubt one of his parents fled the barnyard when he/she realized what was coming next. "Duck dinner," as Wimpy used to say. "You bring the duck."

Mystery of the Magpie Duck: still unsolved?

After the revelations in yesterday's email from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, we went to visit our newly-recognized magpie duck in Como Lake. There he was, fat and feathered and practically eating out of a man's hand as he threw seeds to the flock, which was waddling around on the lake shore.

But then I noticed something.

I noticed something I had sort-of noticed before. Our duck's plumage didn't exactly match the photos of magpie ducks, though they had the same general configuration of light and dark.

But our duck is brown.

Our duck has a brown breast and sides which pretty closely match the rich variegated plumage on the mallards (particularly the females) all around him. Magpie ducks are closer to solid black and white.

Then I realized I probably didn't fully understand what the Cornell Laboratory guy said: "It is a hybrid  of mallard origin" likely referred to OUR duck alone, not the whole species as I had assumed. I guess I thought his entire race had a mallard origin, like Thoroughbreds being spawned from ancient Arabians, or Bengal cats from wildcats, but probably not. Our guy is unique.

Though we can't know for sure because he likely won't submit to a DNA test, this is likely a mixed-race duck, a genetic puzzle, which is partly what makes him so special. That means either his Mummy or his Daddy was a magpie duck which mated with a mallard: a strange love affair, which might even have rendered him sterile, like the mule which results from a donkey mating with a horse.

Or not?

And why is he so big? He's nearly the size of a goose, for God's sake! It's hard to believe he was crossed with anything, let alone a duck so relatively small. We noticed his feet were at least an inch longer, as was his bill. But I tend to trust what the Cornell Lab guys say.

Today, when I was particularly eager to get a good look at him, he practically posed for me, his whole body out of the water, even turning to let me get a look at the other side.

Though the mystery has been solved, it hasn't been solved fully. The scenario is now more complicated: a magpie duck and a mallard producing offspring which has features of each, but is mostly magpie in size and configuration.  And what of "the other one", the second magpie duck which we thought we saw once? Did that mating produce more than one offspring which decided to stay in the safety of the lake rather than become someone's dinner? Or is this Bigfoot all over again, seeing what you want to see?

I wonder, too, why he posed for us on dry land like that. We've been glimpsing that duck for several years, in an "oh, look, there he is!" "Where?" "Oh, he's gone now" sense. Never has he stood there three feet away from us, preening and quacking into the camera.

The magpie is a most illustrious bird

Dwells in a diamond tree

One brings sorrow and one brings joy

Sorrow and joy for me

The magpie is a most royal bird

Black and blue as night

I would that I had feathers three

Black and blue and white

I saw the gentle magpie bird

In dusky yester-eve

One brought sorrow and one brought joy

And sooner than soon did leave

The magpie is a most illustrious bird

Dwells in a diamond tree

One brings sorrow and one brings joy

Sorrow and joy for me

Sorrow and joy for me

Sorrow and joy for me

Mystery duck

The duck mystery deepens. For years now, Bill and I have been walking around Como Lake in Coquitlam - a very pleasant alternative to the "duck park" that has been bulldozed to make way for a Third Reich-scale cement amphitheatre that will blast loud rock music night and day. Obviously, all the wildlife within a 5-mile radius has fled. 

But we still have Como Lake! We noticed some time ago that there are some pretty strange ducks amongst the mallards and wood ducks. This one, for example. This is a very big duck, almost the size of a goose, and he is brown-and-white  (several different shades of brown, from quite dark, almost coffee bean, to cocoa brown). Then we discovered, to our delight, a second brown-and-white duck, somewhat smaller than this one, likely a female. And yet, strangely enough, we've never seen them together.

I made this gif from an eight-second-long YouTube video labelled "Ducks at Como Lake". I know it's the same duck. Not my video, of course. There was no information with it, not even a description. This is not much help.

Do you think I can find ANYTHING on this duck, or on any duck remotely close to it? If I google "brown-and-white duck", I get professional photos that are labelled "brown-and-white duck". They appear to be of barnyard animals, but I can't be sure because there is no information with them at all.

NOBODY knows anything about these two ducks (or are there more? Or will there be babies?), which both intrigues me and drives me crazy. It's possible these are domestic ducks that have gone native, or whatever-it-is they do when they answer the call of the wild. Or maybe they're hybrids - it's just crazy enough. 

There were beavers living in LaFarge Lake (in the famous "duck park" which has now been paved, like Paradise in the Joni Mitchell song), and no one could explain that either. Nine beavers, to be exact, two adults and seven kits. Seems like some fever dream, except that there were nineteen trees felled or seriously gnawed in the park - we've seen some of them - and many still have wire mesh wrapped around the trunks. Beavers in a lake is no big deal, right? How about beavers living in a STONE QUARRY in the middle of a major city, in the residential area right next to a community college?

To make it even stranger, we saw an otter in the lake one day which scared the bejeezus out of the ducks. We've never seen them do this before, but they all, to a duck, beat it out of the water and just huddled in a line along the shore until the otter was well away from them. It swam around on its back like they all do. No way can there be ONE otter in a lake. Or a stone quarry.

Today we went to a place in Burnaby called Piper Spit and saw ducks and ducks and ducks: a mother duck with THIRTEEN babies, so newly-hatched their fluff was wet even when they were sitting on the ground. And we saw a pair of Canada geese with goslings so new they still had that pollen-y-looking yellow stuff on them, almost like vernix on a newborn.

One of the geese kept kinking its neck and bobbing its head at us. We knew why, of course. We were too close to its young. So I said to Bill: Do you know how you can tell it's a Canada goose?

Because it stands on guard? (Moan. It's too late at night.)

Special bonus news item from the Tri-City News!!

They may be one of Canada’s most iconic animals, but the beaver is not welcome in a popular park in Coquitlam.

City officials are once again dealing with the large rodents at Lafarge Lake after the animals appeared in late fall.

While the city isn’t sure how many beavers are in the park, Lanny Englund, the city’s urban forestry and parks services manager, noted a process is underway to have them removed and relocated.

The problem with the beavers is they damage trees and dig tunnels, which can undermine the trails around the lake and cause a hazard.

“It does seem to happen on and off and eventually it gets to the point where the impact is too great,” Englund told the Tri-Cities NOW, noting the city experienced a similar situation with beavers a couple of years ago.

“Town Centre Park is such a high use [park],” he said.

“There’s too much risk allowing them to do their thing.”

In the short term, the city has wrapped trees close to the lake in a fencing wire to protect them from the animals.

The city has also brought in a contractor to live-trap the beavers and relocate them to another part of the province.

It’s unclear how long it will take to trap and remove the animals from the lake.

Meanwhile, the big mystery is exactly how the beavers made the lake their home in the first place.

Englund noted the lake is connected to Hoy Creek and the Coquitlam River by underground pipes, but suggested it would difficult for the beavers to travel through them.

There is also a small creek in the northwest corner of Town Centre Park that has been home to beavers, but it would force the animals to cross over land.

Englund said an even more unlikely scenario is that someone intentionally put the beavers in the lake.
     

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