Pitt River Dike / Grant Narrows Park
I love having this kind of scenery within an hour’s drive of downtown Vancouver! The trails are easy to walk and though the birds are kind of hit and miss, sometimes you’re more in a hiking and landscape-shooting mood, y’know?
But I’ll still take whatever birds get thrown at me
Looking northeast, between Pitt River (on the left) and some unnamed channel / slough on the right. This is about where we turned back to the parking spot but if we wanted to, we could have kept walking for a few more miles, past the golf course, to Sturgeon Slough which I’ve been to a few times, but then the trail ends at that big quarry. There’s more riverside trail all the way down Pitt, past Highway 7, and encircling the west and south sides of Pitt Meadows to the Golden Ears Bridge, but no direct connection with this trail.
That’s annoying and kind of sad. Guess you can’t avoid extraction and industry even in the supposed back country.
Now, what the hell is this bird we saw flying away across the river (and was too far away to easily focus on)? It’s big, it’s… pale grey? It has darker fringier wingtips. The only thing I could think of was a male Northern Harrier — they’re pale-ish hawks, which fit the fringes, but still not really that pale, and probably too small anyway?
I asked the Vancouver Queer Birders discord, we’ve got a channel for bird IDs. And the consensus was…
… a Sandhill Crane!
Well, that was unexpected.
Thinking about it, though, it makes sense. They do have this exact coloration, down to the bit of brown on the back and the dark wing fringes that lots of birds have, not just eagles or hawks. They can curve their wings down, whereas harriers tend to soar with their wings up in a V shape. And, apparently they nest in this area. So there you go. As the kids say, TIL!
These guys, I’ve seen before. Here’s one landing amongst the reeds.
And another coming in from across the river
Oh but here’s a bird I’ve only seen a handful of times: a Turkey Vulture! Mostly in remote areas, so this tracks. The light is bad, but if you look very closely you’ll see a bit of red on the head.
The little complex of ponds near the parking spot. It looks like they connect to the river via a little canal. Which kinda makes you think, how much of this landscape is artificial, with all these dikes and canals
At Grant Narrows Park. I dunno, I just liked this composition. I bet the gull breaks the rule every day.
Looking up Pitt Lake. The northern end is 25km away so I couldn’t see it even if it curve away a bit. Fun fact I just learned: this is a tidal laiek, one of the largest in the world.
ƛ̓éxətəm (Tlahutum) Regional Park
Not a lot to see at ƛ̓éxətəm. The community gardens are still a bit flooded and not much is growing yet, and few bird photos I’m really happy with. So hey, we’re looking at the scenery now that the sky’s cleared up
I don’t usually shoot up this little creek, but I couldn’t resist the reflection.
Okay fine, I would have felt weird not taking photos of even a single bird.
