Iona Island

We went to Iona Island this weekend for a walk. It's a great place to see tons of birds (marsh, pond, shrubby, oceanic and shore) without having to drive quite as far as to get to Reifel.

The tree swallows were insane this weekend! I don't know how many we saw flying over the water and hanging out near nest boxes, but it was really cool. :)

 Pretty swallow hanging out on it's house.

 And again. Hard to resist!

 A male red-winged blackbird. Also pretty, but in a different way.

 Pretty pair of birds hangin' out near home.

 All of those wonky, crooked things are Great Blue Herons. So many.

 This photo is awful, I know. The birds flying through are some sort of shorebird.. a HUGE flock flew when I took this photo.

 A Caspain Tern! (I'm pretty sure). I thought these were gulls at first. They were diving for (fish?) food and it was really awesome to watch.

 I think this was an American Goldfinch. I just like how the body is in focus. :)

A yellow-rumped warbler. Pretty!

Mom's Garden

I forgot that I took more photos while I was at home over Easter! I haven't taken any in a while, so now is as good a time as any to post some.

This first crocus was taken with a shutter speed of 640 and an ISO of 320..

  Whereas this one was taken with a shutter speed of 4000 and an ISO of 640. I like that you can actually see detail in the second one, so I'll have to remember that changing the ISO will help with that.

 More crocuses! They're springy.. :)

I'm not sure if this is a hyacinth (I don't think so?) but I'm not sure what it is, other than cool! The blue looks gorgeous up close.

Vancouver Adventure

Today R and I went on an adventure to find a food cart for lunch. I thought it'd be an interesting date idea, since we've never been to one in Vancouver, and it's something that we'd never normally do. I thought it would be easy (like.. walk to Broadway/Granville and find one) but no, it took us almost 2.5 hours until we found one that we wanted to eat at. It was the third one we saw and the only one that looked interesting.

 After that we wandered around downtown (slowly) and found this beautiful magnolia patch.

 Such a nice contrast to the blue sky..

 I love the nature in the city thing that Vancouver has. Lots of cities don't have the number of trees and stuff that Vancouver does, and I have to say.. I really appreciate trees like this!

 Hyacinth and downtown buildings. I love the colour of this one :)

 Not sure what this is, but I like it.

.. and more cherry blossoms. They're gorgeous and the leaves are slowly coming out now. Feels like spring here, finally! We also planted our teeny garden today, so that makes it feel even more springy!

Knutsford adventure

Met up with K this afternoon to go for a drive and take photos. Knutsford is such a nice place to go because it's not very far from town, but it's almost like a different world. Country, fences, cows.. it's so nice :)

We were on the hunt for the elusive mountain bluebird as well as western meadowlarks. We did end up finding quite a few bluebirds, but they're so shy that they fly away basically as soon as you've got out of the car. Even my lovely 200mm lens wasn't good enough to get any great photos..

 Fences, farmlands and bluebirds.. pretty!

 The clouds were pretty dark, which makes photos so much better

 This is what we were going for. Dark clouds, blue birds, fences.. how can you go wrong (Oh, I know. the bird can FLY and you can't.)

 Hair stuck on fences. Kind of gross, but also kind of cool looking..

 More hair.

 Probably my favourite shot of the day. Bright scarf, dark fence.. awesome. (Oh, and you can see the snow in this one).

So pretty! I'm going to have to figure out how to make the rest black/white.

Cherry Blossoms

After our hike today, it was absolutely gorgeous out, so R and I went for a walk to try and find him a book he wanted. We wandered from our place down to Granville, up to 16th, and then back down to Broadway when we hit MacDonald. We found him the book he wanted, but I didn't have any luck finding mine. I guess I'll have to read something from the bookshelf this week...

Anyhow. Back to the cherry blossoms! I found more today and enjoyed taking some photos in the sun. These look very similar to every other season of cherry blossoms, but I don't care. :)

Nothing really to say. Beautiful blue sky, amazing pink flowers and buds. Welcome back spring!