Yesterday I went to one of my favourite local patches to do some birding – which I haven’t done since I began monitoring gull nests back in mid-June. I honestly forgot what it was like to bird in a quasi-natural environment after spending over two months spying on gull chicks from desolate concrete sidewalks a meter or two away from passing cars (and their exhaust).
Jericho Beach Park is one of my favourite places in Vancouver for birding. There’s a large variety of habitats and it’s fairly quiet if you go early enough in the morning.
A lot of birders have been showing up for the past week to catch a Great Egret that’s been hanging out in the pond – a rare species for us here in Vancouver. This bird was not the reason I went. I’ve given up on ’twitching’ – the jargon birders use for chasing rare birds – as it always entails too many people with too many cameras mulling around. I’m far happier wandering about aimlessly and experiencing whatever I encounter.
Birding, for me, is about escaping humanity – even to the point of pretending Homo sapiens or our recent ancestors never made it through the population bottleneck(s) we encountered.
Anyway, enough of my anti-anthropic ideology… here are some of the birds I was lucky to encounter.
Filtered through the wildfire smoke, the morning sunlight took on the colour of apricots. The air was heavy with humidity and the heat already pressed down on the city and those of us walking the barren concrete spaces where pedestrians are an afterthought.
Almost all the nests I’ve been watching since late June are empty. It’s strange seeing these rooftops with only scraps of nest material remaining. How far removed we are from the nomadic origins of our species. How difficult to imagine our homes as temporary spaces, to travel and survive without our countless possessions, to leave so little trace of our existence.
Chimney nest
Chimney nest
I found the chicks from Chimney nest on the awning/overhang where they have taken up residence since leaving the chimney platform.
I made it out to check nests on both Aug 18th and Aug 20th and have a considerable amount to catch up on in this post.
I’ll warn you in advance that it’s been a challenging time – many of the fledglings are now leaving the nests, some more prepared than others, some luckier than others.
I started my visit at the south end of the Burrard Street bridge, passing by the Clipper nests. As on my previous visit, I was able to count five fledglings scattered around the rooftop, most of them still sleeping and one or two lazily wandering around, occasionally testing out their wings.
Burrard nest #4
Crossing the bridge, I checked on the chicks in the Burrard nests, and all were accounted for. Passing the midway point, I noticed a young gull standing on top of the rooftop between bridge towers. Given that all the other chicks were accounted for, this is probably the chick from Burrard nest #4.
