Boundary Bay

It snowed in Vancouver (and the Lower Mainland, I suppose) Friday and again yesterday, so R decided that we would definitely see snowy owls if we went to Boundary Bay. I looked at the Vancouver Rare bird report, which said that 28 were sited (on one day) near 72nd and Boundary Bay.

We started out at Centennial Beach, which is where we went last time. We went for a walk, saw tons of birds and people with dogs not on leashes (not sure how people are ok with that? It's a nature reserve...) and got some cool photos.

I'm not sure what happened, but all of a sudden the water went from looking like this, full of brandts.. 

 .. to this. They flew away in a matter of seconds, and all you could hear was wingbeats. Pretty awesome.

After being at Centennial Beach for a while, we decided to try and find the 28 snowy owls..

.. and found 14 eagles in a tree.. 

and snowy owls! So incredibly cool! We saw at least 9, and way too many people pushing to get closer for photos. Kinda sad, because most were way off the trails, and close to harassing the poor birds.

So. many. people. Lenses that were more than a two feet long. Huge scopes. Tripods for teeny cameras, tripods for huge cameras. Insanity.

We saw more than just eagles and owls. We also saw this bright tree (possibly crabapple) with tons of golden-crowned sparrows hanging out.

There was tons of people taking photos of this guy.. he (she?) was bigger than most, and had way darker colours on it's back. It was also sitting on a log, whereas the rest were nestled among the logs.

This little guy decided to ruffle his feathers for us.

And then settled down with a nice stare.