Wordless Wednesday - Biked to Phoenix Pond & Finn Slough

Pair of Yellowlegs

Attempting photograph dragonflies in flight

Do insects sleep or do they just take breaks resting in their busy short lives?

Bumblebee "resting" on a blackberry leaf.

Butterflies other than Whites

Today's a good Sunday.

Nice weather.

Animals I saw when I slowed down...

Instead of biking from point to point, I decided to just take things slow and enjoy life and nature as they come to me.

As I sat on the bench watching the Fraser River, a Cabbage White (Pieris rapae) was flying from plant to plant hoping to find a place to rest. I slowly inched closer and closer and was able to get these pretty satisfying photos (using my 70-300 lens at closest focus of 0.96m. The Raynox 250 requires subjects to be about 10-15 cm away, which is way too close for skittish insects).

First (decent) photos of Barn Swallow of the year

Before I reached the dyke, I saw a crow on wire removing feathers from a mysterious dead small bird. Unfortunately, it flew away after I took out my camera, and changed the lens and settings. Moments later, two Barn Swallows landed on the same wire and started singing.

Chickadees' and Killdeers' potentially nesting?

This was one of the few photos taken from our 'backyard' yesterday when it was grey and wet out using the OM lens.

This was taken at f2 as you can tell by the blurriness behind the flower in focus. The colors captured by this lens is not as saturated as the digital lenses, but it is fixable with some post-processing.

Bald Eagle watching & first experience with OM lens

Today I headed to Finn Slough first thing in the afternoon to meet up with a fellow birder, who is kindly giving me his lens adapter for adapting old Olympus film OM lens to 4/3 digital bodies, as well as lending me his Zuiko OM 50mm f1.4 lens to try it out.

Before I got to Finn Slough, I spotted this Red-tailed Hawk on top of the telephone pole just above me. From experience, I know they tend to be very shy and almost always fly away before I can take out my camera. So I biked past it and took photos from about 100-m away. Not the best photo but good enough to finally show that there are Red-tailed Hawks around in the area.

Hummingbird Observing

Six straight posts; three straight days of nice weathers; excellent!

A bit cloudy today, but overall it was acceptable.

Incomplete rainbow?

The weather in the afternoon was not as good as the morning; it was hazy and warm.

I have no idea what this phenomenon is, but there was just this patch of "rainbow" in the hazy sky.

Glowing Hummingbird and then Sunset

Another beautiful day today. First thing today was biking to Garden City/South Dyke Sharing Farm to see if I can find some critters. Unfortunately, only few of the gardens look like they are in use this year, so I couldn't find anything, except for a bee that flew by me real quick.

Pigeons on Wire. Some people like to feed these birds (and the gulls) by throwing their leftover breads in this area. Today, a patch of the ground was filled with dinner rolls! It's such a waste of food, plus bread aren't good for birds at all. It's hard to convince people otherwise.

Busy Bee and Cool Cat

I headed towards London Farm again this afternoon. But before I did, I went to the sharing farm across the street and saw nothing. London Farm, on the other hand, was lively with pollinating European Honey Bees. I saw one bumblebee here yesterday, but didn't get a chance to photograph it, and didn't see it today.

The most popular plant today was the Hellebore (I believe it is Helleborus foetidus with the purple edge on each petal). According to Wikipedia, it has up to ten nectaries, which is probably a efficient plant for a honey bee to spend a long time in one of them.

Away...Again

Sometimes life is just like today...one day, everything was going your way, and the next day, nothing is going your way. I am talking about wildlife watching, of course, although I can't really complain because I still saw quite a lot.

Today's weather was gorgeous!

Officially Into Spring

One day into the actual Spring, and it was chilly and cloudy (compared to yesterday). It is never good to get your hopes up.

I went looking for pollinators in London Heritage Farm today. But given the weather and the flowering conditions (almost zero), most of the honey bees I saw were sunning (when the sun was out briefly).

There is a sharing farm in the back with several private gardens. One of them was guarded by this toy Stegosaurus.

Wordless Wednesday - Biked to Finn Slough again

Keep on birding

Feeling the need to start building my insect knowledge, I first went to South Dyke Sharing Farm to see if I can spot any insects. No such luck.

Keep on birding until spring arrives, I suppose.

Weather was nice today when I went out. Mew Gull (I think) flying by.

Strange weather day

The weather in Richmond was quite strange today. It was sunny for one moment, then cloudy and rainy the next. At home, I kept staring at the blue skies in Vancouver and the dark clouds over Delta; in the end, my urge to go outside won over and I quickly grabbed my backpack and biked to the dike.

The tide was quite high when I got there (the highest was 3.1-m at 15:47).

Last Grey Day...of 2011 Feb

I registered for a CPR & First Aid course this morning, the course will take place next Saturday. It's something I have been meaning to take for a while, plus I will need it when I head out to this field this year.

Anyways, I went for a bike ride in the afternoon to Finn Slough, but worrying the rain might come down any time.

Birding at Finn Slough - Bird of the day: TUVU

Another bike ride to Finn Slough to get the much-needed exercise/birding.

Along the way, I saw lots of Mew Gulls and other gulls circling around in the sky.

Many Golden-crowned Sparrow feeding.

Blackie & Number Four

This afternoon, I officially met the two cats that I often come across while biking through Finn Slough.

This is Blackie on the left and Number Four on the right. They are brothers but with different fathers. Blackie is 19 years old and Number Four is 24 years old! Number Four is just as young as me! Amazing.

Good wildlife-watching day; Bad photography day

Life sometimes like to play funny tricks on you. For example, today is incredibly cloudy and a bad day for photography, but yet I saw so many cool critters, e.g. Muskrat, lots of raptors, Mink(! - no photo). Sigh, blurry photos will still serve as a good day.

First, I saw a Muskrat eating vegetation in the ditch. First Muskrat of the year!