Not just a small duck, a Green-Winged Teal

A Winter bird in southern BC, this vegetarian dabbling duck is North America's smallest:

Sechelt Motocross Track

Sechelt

Dearest Song Sparrow, stay quiet lest we forget about you.

Unlike the rest of the country, we here in BC are privy to the unique sounds of the Song Sparrow year round. The most vocal of song birds, we hear him daily yet see him fleetingly as he ducks into the brambles before we can get close.

Anger, we all feel it.

Eats shoots and leaves.

Click the pic, then click it again for the real size and have a look at its hands and feet... they are amazing little limbs with which s/he can both swim and climb at quick speeds. When I first noticed this little critter it was swimming briskly around in the water near where I was standing. My first thought was that maybe it was a young beaver since it swam similarly, but when it crawled out of the water I realized how small this little critter is. Excluding it's tail, it's not even 7 inches.

Bursts of speed

It's crazy how well salmon can thrash through shallow water. Sometimes they have to thrash over 12 feet of water so shallow their bellies are raking the riverbed.

The salmon are back in Surrey!!

When the Sockeye returned to Adams River in numbers not seen in 100 years I had to go check Tynehead Park to see if any salmon had made it there yet. There where none. But this was last week. This week they are plentiful, and after speaking with a parks official I discovered it is not sockeye but rather Chum and Herring that made a return to Surrey's Serpentine River.

In the past I have seen Salmon swimming upstream and spawning, but I had never seen their capabilities in navigating a trying section or overcoming small waterfalls. Well, yesterday I did, and it was truly amazing if not inspiring. Unfortunately is was raining (which explained why there was so many yesterday) so I could not take many photos or set up the tripod; nonetheless I captured a few images worth posting:


This old girl is over two feet long and was desperately trying to get the drive needed to overcome rocks twice her size.




It was intense as she pushed and thrashed in minimal water while surly not getting the oxygen needed, only to be defeated due to her decision to enter such a shallow part of the stream.



Here she rests in exhaustion before moving on to the deeper parts. To her dismay, the deeper parts are at most a few more inches. She's lucky if she finds an area where water can completely fill her gills. The hell she is going through for the sake of propagating her genes is beyond remarkable.

Freedom of mind patterns...

The morning a hawk ate a sparrow on my fence:

Turns out this young Cooper's Hawk is built for agile maneuvers and has been known to grab small birds off backyards feeders. Unfortunately I didn't see it strike, but I noticed the commotion and grapped my camera in time to see a few snack bites. I was stoked.

-Why is that ferry cruisin down Number 8 Road?

...Oh that's right, the Fraser River's over there.

-So why is there a Ferry in the Fraser River?
...Hmm, good question.

Riding at 8 Road