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.

Least Sandpiper

Shorebirds are intimidating. They can be nearly impossible to identify to the uninitiated, and sometimes almost as difficult to those in the know.

My response is “so what?”

They are sentient beings whose lives exist outside of some hominid attaching a name to them. Simply watch them and wonder.

Jericho Pond

Looking west from a small wooden bridge (under which many Barn Swallows nest), you can see evidence of the beavers that live in the pond. You can’t tell from the photo, but the entire mound in the bottom right corner is a beaver den.

The water level is very low from the summer heat, with only a few small channels remaining.

Western Sandpiper

While photographing the sandpipers in the pond, a few wandered very close to me, including this Western Sandpiper.

Many hearts sank a few month ago when the Canadian federal government, despite their rhetoric of halting and reversing biodiversity loss, approved a controversial plan to expand a shipping terminal that directly impacts one of the major migratory stopovers of these birds.

Spotted Sandpiper

Renown for their characteristic and charming ’teetering’ which obviously doesn’t translate to still photos.

There was a flock of 4-5 of these birds hiding out the rocky shore that I wouldn’t have noticed if not for a passing boat that flushed them.

Greater Yellowlegs

One of a pair of Greater Yellowlegs stalking the pond for food.

Ring-billed Gull

A number of Ring-billed Gulls were picking through the seaweed exposed by low tide. This adult looked especially stunning against the dark background.

Wilson’s Warbler

I was surprised I got this photo – these little birds move quickly, and more often than not I’m left with a blurry photo of a bird flying out of the frame.

This little bird, measuring no more than 4 inches and with an average weight of 7 grams (about three pennies), will soon be leaving on a migration of over 2,000 miles to Mexico.

Northern Flicker

I disturbed this bird as it was foraging for ants in the spaces between sidewalk tiles. Despite walking slowly and giving it space, it was still unsure and perched on a nearby fence until I left. Like most birds it wisely lives by the motto: Never trust a mammal.

Until next time…

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