This year I’ve started using QGIS instead of google maps to keep track of gull nest data. QGIS is a free and incredibly powerful geographic information system. I’m a novice user but I’m using this opportunity to start learning. Click on the above image to be taken to an interactive map – you can click on each nest and see the information I’ve gathered so far.

June 8th, Sunday morning, was my first official round of gull nest monitoring. As I mentioned in a previous post, the route I’ve taken for the last few years is inaccessible in a few places. But I went where I could.

I didn’t grasp it at the time, but these footprints I found on an inexplicably sand-covered sidewalk summarized my state that day: disorientation. After ten months, I feel bewildered and disconnected from the gulls. It will take a few more weeks to get myself closer to them, for their lives to intertwine with mine.

Approaching White Lake on my yearly pilgrimage to the BC interior, I was greeted by this sign. The Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory is located close to the lake – it was incredibly liberating to bird without a phone or camera, using only a notebook. Photographs never capture the reality of birds: the Bullock’s Orioles I saw glowed a smouldering amber illuminated from within by a flame of golden-apricot.

The construction drags on, seemingly endlessly, on both the Granville Street and Cambie Bridges. As June draws near, I’m increasingly disheartened knowing I may be unable to observe some of the most visible gull nests. If I’m lucky, the work will be done before mid-June. Or perhaps this is an obstacle that will force me to look elsewhere and find new nests.