Iona Beach Regional Park
The sun was shining and the wind was blowing when the Vancouver Queer Birders gathered on Iona Beach. It was a lovely time with lovely people, and the fact that it took us a couple hours to go around the ponds and back trails was just fine by me! Sometimes I like to walk fast and cover as much ground as possible, sometimes I like being in a big wibbly group of people walking at different paces, splitting and reforming, hanging out and comparing notes, sending texts about this or that cool bird. Life’s not a race, folks.
Now usually in outings like this, with lots of new people, you go round the circle and introduce yourself with a simple prompt like:
- your name
- your pronouns
- your favourite bird
And you hear the loveliest and most unexpected things. Are crows your fave? Awesome. Did House Sparrows get you into birding? Totes valid. But today, the prompt was: name, pronouns, and a bird you think is “mid”. Ooo controversy! Well, kind of. Most of the answers were birds that were too common (e.g.: Great Blue Herons) or kind of overrated (e.g.: any raptor), or… a bit random, honestly (e.g.: Spotted Towhees???). But hey, it’s all in good fun.
For the record, I answered “pigeons.” I mean, they’re nice and all, and hilarious when they try to act sexy, and I have taken some really excellent photos of them over the years, but most of the time they’re just… sort of there? Maybe that’s not fair, but there you go.
Now, one bird that’s very far from mid, and that we were hoping to see, was the resident Yellow-headed Blackbird. They’re uncommon on the coast but there’s always at least one here, hanging out in the marshes around the main pond or stalking up and down the parking lot. And guess what? Even before we started wondering where he was, we spotted him and his vibrant colours on a tree by the boardwalk, after which he did a couple rounds around the benches and nearby cars. What an amazing little superstar!
The other highlight of the morning was sand wasps. As per usual there were a zillion of them around the sandier trails, frantically zipping around and shoving each and trying to dig little burrows to lay their eggs. I had noticed on previous visits they came into two colours: one with a blue-greyish abdomen, and one with a more yellow-green one. And watching them all go about their waspy biz it seemed to me that the greyer wasps were females, digging their little burrows, while the yellow-green ones were males, constantly trying to molest the females.
But now I’m not so sure that’s true. From what I could read online, the only sexual dimorphism that’s ever mentioned is that females tend to be bigger than males (because of the extra egg-laying equipment). Maybe this is just a colour morph that’s got nothing to do with sex? For what it’s worth, looking at these photos again, it does look like the yellow-green ones’ abdomens are proportionately longer and thinner.
Regardless, these critters are endlessly fascinating to watch, and quite safe to be around. I even experimented with lower angles as I knelt on the soft sandy soil, and got a fantastic action shot of one wasp diving on another. Also, a not-so-fantastic shot of another wasp hovering over another? I probably wouldn’t have included that one, except it looks like the grey digging one is laying eggs? And I think the yellow flying one has some kind of claspers, which indicates it’s a male, and maybe about ready to do the deed? Bit of a mystery, but I’m okay living with that mystery for now.
All in all, a lovely day with lovely folks in lovely weather, giving me lovely photos of birds and bugs and landscapes, what more can you ask for?
The photos
