Now that my nest monitoring has come to a close, I’m spending my Sundays at Jericho Beach Park. Yesterday I encountered a group of three Western Sandpipers (Calidris mauri) foraging on some rocks as the tide retreated. They didn’t pay me much mind and I was able to inch quite close to get some good photos of these fascinating and oh-so-tiny shorebirds.

Western Sandpipers

A close-up portrait showing the often distinctive rich chestnut colouration in their mantle.

Nearly all the nests are empty now, and this is likely the final post for the 2024 nesting season. It’s been just over two months since I spotted the first chicks of the year at Culinary Nest on June 23rd. I can’t help thinking back to something I read in Robert MacFarlane’s introduction to The Peregrine:

This is a book which sets the imagination aloft, and keeps it there for months and years afterwards.

Having witnessed these chicks grow and take wing, some part of me has flown away with them. Like continents moving at a geological time scale, every year brings the abyss between their world and mine a few millimeters closer. When I see them soaring in the winds above False Creek, I cannot help but stand and stare.

I’ve only got a few nests left to report on, so I spent more time than usual watching adult gulls.

Pyramid Nest

I was a surprised to see both fledglings resting close to their nest. Both started begging as a parent landed at the nest site.

After the chaos and crescendo of last weekend’s monitoring (and several encounters with downed fledglings during the week), this weekend was quiet and calm. Heavy rains fell overnight, and the morning was overcast, providing a fleeting glimpse of fall. The change was echoed in many of the nests – now empty, the chicks fledged and starting life on their own. Time unfolds strangely for me when I start monitoring the nests. It becomes malleable and in some paradoxical Möbius-strip manner ticks along both quickly and slowly, yet somehow never any differently than any other time.

As we approach the end of the season, they’re be fewer and fewer nests to write about. So let’s begin with what we have left…

Pyramid Nest

I was only able to spy one of the two fledglings from this nest – I caught this one mid-stretch. What I loved about this photo is that the bottom of the gulls’ foot is visible. How often do you get to see that?

Mid-to-late August brings new wonders and a heavy burden of anxiety that is barely perceptible to me at the beginning of the breeding season. A majority of the fledglings are strong enough to take flight, if only briefly and awkwardly. Seeing them wheeling around their nest sites, becoming surer of their new life and freed from the boundary of their natal rooftop is profound.

But with this also comes fledglings that fall off ledges before they’re strong enough to fly back up, fledglings stranded on the ground and sidewalks, often with injured wings – scared, weak, and with no experience of the dangers of humans, their dogs, and cars.

Repeater Nest

This was a new nest I found last weekend. I had seen this fledgling on the ledge of the building perhaps ten minutes before this. I was walking through a pathway on my way to check on the cormorants when I noticed this fledgling down in some grass…