It’s been a strange week and I seem to have gotten lost in between the last days of summer and the first days of autumn. Finding this Pacific Tree Frog helped me briefly escape the idiocy of the world we’ve built for ourselves.

This morning I lead a bird walk for VARC at Jericho Beach Park. I arrived a bit early to get a sense of what was around. While checking one stretch of beach, I saw a spiky dorsal fin protruding from the water near the shoreline.

Upon closer inspection, I was surprised to find this strange looking fish swimming weakly and being tumbled by the tide. I took some photos with my phone and quickly submitted them to iNaturalist, which helped me ID it as a Spotted Ratfish (Hydrolagus colliei).

Friday’s sunrise from my favourite out of the way spot at Jericho Beach.

Smoke from forest fires was thick over the city last week, something becoming increasingly common in our summers. Above, the sunrise from last Friday.

If you’ve not read it, I highly recommend John Vaillant’s Fire Weather, a haunting look into the future we’re heedlessly speeding toward. He’s a gifted writer, and I have no qualms recommending his previous books The Golden Spruce and The Tiger.