Boundary Bay/Reifel Bird Sanctuary

Yesterday was my first field trip with WildResearch - we were going to head out to Boundary Bay to learn about IDing shorebirds and raptors. Unfortunately, some seriously gross weather changed that.. We ended up looking at the Snowy owls quickly, and then heading to Reifel Bird Sanctuary (another favourite place of mine), which was much more protected. The weather was still gross - windy, cold and periodic rain, but it was really great to be with people who could teach us about the ducks and other birds.

 

10 snowy owls..!

 Snowy owl in flight.. wish I'd been faster (and my camera focused a bit faster), because it was wayy closer than this photo shows!

 Golden-crowned Sparrow. Identifiable by it's golden crown (.. amazing!). Also learned that it's foraging habits are different than that of other Sparrows (at least the Fox Sparrow). These guys just hop around eating, while the Fox Sparrow sort of digs with its feet.

 Male Wood Duck. These guys are beautiful! One of the guys told us that the females were originally identified as a different species.. they do look similar, but they're a bit flashier than other female ducks (in my opinion, at least)

 Mallard eating at a bird feeder. In a tree. About a meter off the ground.

 Female (left) and male (right) Red-Winged Blackbirds. Without the males close by, I'm very bad at telling the females apart from other Sparows. However, I learned that the beaks are different (more pointed in the blackbirds, more conical in Sparrows), and that they are actually a bit bigger. Size really doesn't mean much when you're talking about birds though, unless you can see them side-by-side.

 This made someone smile :)

Male Northern Pintail. Long tail (which is a bit cut-out), white stripes up the back of it's neck, and the blueish bill are give aways. The females are nice looking, too.

Sandhill Cranes.. these guys are huge (almost waist height). I took way more photos, but my lens was getting really wet, and they weren't focussing. Too bad.. we were really close to them.

All in all, a very chilly day, but well worth the morning of being outside. I think I'll appreciate being at Reifel more now, because I know more. I think R really enjoyed the experience too.. I convinced him to buy a year memebership, so hopefully sometime soon we'll have us both out banding!

Queen E

These photos were taken the same day as the photos of PNKy.. they just didn't make it into that post.

I found the RAW photo editor that Amanda (from the photography walk) was talking about - it's called Raw Therapee. I like that it's free!

I never really know what to do to edit photos, so I was just playing with contrast and brightness a bit.

Before and after. I like both photos.. the first one reminds me of some sort of vintagey type photo, while you can really see the witch-hazel flowers in the second. And yes.. at the beginning of February, this plant is already flowering.

My camera was set on this last photo for the exposure length. I personally prefer the lighter ones, but it's pretty too.

I think I'm basically out of things to post now.. I'm going to have to take some photos!!

Illuminate Yaletown

Illuminate Yaletown is a strange event that happens in early February in Yaletown. It's basically a festival of lights - strange light displays on buildings, art with light, ice sculptures with light.. etc.

This is the third year that I've gone, but the first with my Nikon (and a tripod!).

I didn't take very many photos, but here's one building that I liked.

 Illuminated pine logs. I think it that these are the real growth rings, illuminated somehow, but I don't remember.

After taking this photo, my camera said "job nr" which I took to mean as not recorded, but it actually means "noise reduction." .. So thank you camera for taking this lovely photo (15 second exposure!) but... not so much for making me grumpy and thinking you were broken.

I'm going to head to the library and see if I can find a book on photo editing.. then maybe I'll do something with the RAW photos I've collected. If I do manage to figure it out, then I'll post some pre-and post-editing photos :)

Bird Banding

This past Saturday I finally made it down to Iona Island to do some bird banding with a local naturalist club. Bird banding, for those who don't know, is a practice whereby a small aluminum band is placed around a bird's leg. The birds are caught in mist nets, carefully removed and brought back to the banding station. From here, they are banded, weighed, sexed, aged and have their wings measured.

Banding serves many purposes - it can help show where birds are migrating to, can help researchers learn about the life span of birds, how habitats are providing them with food (through their weights) and can also help to do a basic census of what's in the area.

The morning was really foggy, and most of the nets were frozen shut for the first bit, which meant lots of opportunity to take photos!

Early morning fog...

A cute little black-capped chickadee! I tried to get him to face the camera but he kept his little eyes on me the whole time... 

Sun rise (if you can believe it!)

Still, silent morning. Beautiful though.

Cars

This past week, I bought my first ever car! While this is very exciting and happy (not to mention expensive!), it's also a bit sad. Baby car (R's first car) is going to be scrapped - thanks to incentives from the BC Government.

We had a bit of a photo session with each car - one to send some photos to parents, and a second to commemorate the life of an awesome car.

Here's a few comparisons - specs first, other stuff after:

Baby Car	PNKy
1992 Dodge Colt 200 E	2008 Volkswagen City Golf
Black	Mystic Blue
3 doors, 5 seats	5 doors, 5 seats
	Air conditioning
	Heated seats

PNKy is a definite upgrade for us, and hopefully a car that'll last us for at least 10 years!

Onto the photos, which is obviously way more fun.

Sad boy... excited boy!








Baby car has tons of memories - a road trip to Oregon, me learning how to drive standard, long drives on Lac le Jeune road when we were friends, and after.. PNKy currently doesn't have many (other than a techno CD that has songs from highschool that we both know that it came with).. but there's still tons of time to make new ones.

Farewell baby car.

Year of the Dragon

Gung Hay Fat Choy, world! This year is my year - actually. I was born in the year of the dragon, which is what this year is. Exciting!

Here's a few photos from the Chinese New Year parade in Vancouver. Like any other parade I've been to, it was rainy.. which meant that any chance of a view was blocked by about 10 umbrellas. You really would think that given how long people have lived here, and all that.. that we could get over our fear of rain and just get wet. Whatever, it's water, we're mostly waterproof, we dry off.. sometimes quickly!

Ok, enough ranting. Here's some photos:

To be fair.. you can see just how much it was raining in this photo!

 Balloon dragon.. with a broken neck?

 Best for last..

 Seriously impressive - they did this pretty quickly, and almost entirely in synch! The rest of the parade was hard to see (see umbrella rant, above), and not as exciting as this. After the parade, we watched the dragons eat lettuce from the storefronts around Chinatown.