Day 289: Even the squirrels are grey round here

I had equally-low hopes for today's photo as for the last two days, thinking that I'd get a trio of grey pictures, but I did at least take the unprecedented step of going out just after lunch. To my surprise, there were large patches of blue sky around with the sun making the occasional appearance. Great! I went off in search of some shots I've been keeping in mind for brighter days, only to find that I have a lot to learn about getting this new camera to focus in macro mode... :-/ But I was saved by a squirrel in the tree above me, with a lovely blue-sky backdrop. I took one photo, and the squirrel was spooked by me hanging around underneath it. I took another just as it moved its paw into a more interesting position to get the shot below, which I'm very happy with. You could say I got my trio of grey after all!

Transfixed grey squirrel

Day 269: The seagull and the squirrel

The usual late-day foray outside to look for a subject.... I walked west and noticed a seagull standing next to a bin, casting its beady eye on the squirrel perched on the rim, which was munching something it had hauled out of the rubbish. I wasn't sure if the bird was really waiting around for the squirrel, and sure enough it walked away a little while I was standing there. I moved in a little closer to the squirrel and it took off, running across the path to a bench. To my surprise the seagull ran-flapped its way over to the same bench and proceeded to take up its post again, watching the squirrel eat. I started taking some photos, edging closer all the time. Both creatures were so intent on what they were doing that they let me get quite close, and it was only when a grey squirrel moved in and decided it wanted what the black one had that either moved. I went on to look for more photographs, but came back to this one at the end of the day.

Seagull and squirrel

Day 248: That otter do it

I still can't believe my eyes: on a walk around part of the Stanley Park seawall, we saw a trio of river otters swimming alongside the wall. What a wonderful sight!

Otter trio

Day 226: Burying acorns

The squirrels have been busy of late, seeking out and burying acorns. One or two are quite bold and seem to be largely oblivious to the presence of the hordes of students walking between classes. I sidled up to this one that was intent on its acorn-hiding and managed to get within a couple of metres without spooking it. It had just finished burying an acorn, I was moving in a little closer for a better angle, and then a student zoomed by on a bike and startled it up the tree. I'll have to make do with this shot then.

Burying acorns

Day 206: Sunny bunny

A sunny Friday afternoon, time to cycle home along the beach. A few nights ago we'd been walking on Jericho Beach and noticed how many rabbits there were and how tame some of them were. Today the rabbits were grazing out in the sunshine and I took my chance to get some bunny close-ups.

Sunny bunny

Day 197: Who, me?

Another attempt to get a photo of a squirrel leaping in the grass. I wandered out in spotting rain and saw one of the black squirrels foraging in the grass. It darted off as I approached and I thought my chance had gone, but then a grey squirrel appeared and I followed it round for a bit. No luck though as it never stopped moving. I had a couple of "almost" shots, and I was ready to go with that when the black squirrel returned and began foraging in the grass. I moved closer and set up the camera to get my photo when it spotted me. It looked up and froze as if to say "Who, me?" - perfect! Even though I was at full zoom and the exposure time was 1/40 s, I managed to hold the (old) camera steady and the picture came out much better than I expected.

Squirrel surprise

Day 194: Bears in a tree

Day two of our Okanagan trip and I had seen that Hardy Falls regional park near Peachland had a kokanee salmon run. Kokanee are landlocked sockeye, and are just as colourful during the spawning season though they tend to be much smaller. This weekend last year we called in at the Adams River sockeye run and I was blown away by the numbers, even though we were close to the end of the run, so I was really looking forward to seeing the "red fish" again. As a bonus, we'd seen photos of a bear in the park but I figured it would be too much to hope that we'd see one.

However, within only a few minutes of parking up and walking to the first bridge to look at the salmon, I heard someone say "bear" and looked up the slope to see a bear dashing away. To our amazement there were two of them and we heard them cross the creek and head into the undergrowth a few metres downstream. We carefully made our way out of the park and downstream to a picnic area where suddenly we saw both bears climbing a ponderosa pine. We stopped and watched for a few minutes, taking as many pictures as possible. I even shot a short video of one of the bears, umm, scratching itself. We left them alone and continued upstream to the waterfall (via a geocache under a bridge) and a third bear encounter! Talk about the classic BC experience - salmon and bears in one place :-) Wow!

Black bears in a tree

Day 166: Grizzly

It was a frosty morning in Kootenay National Park, and the four travellers ventured through the chilly forest, emerging into the warming sunshine at a frigid alpine river. Crossing on a wobbly bridge, they entered meadows that were glistening with dew, soon reaching the ruddy ochre beds. A shrew disturbed the morning quiet, momentarily distracting the travellers from their onward journey. The nearby paint pots glowed green. Continuing on to the marble canyon, the travellers trod a safe path well away from the precipitous drop, pausing to admire the blue-green river and its raging waterfall. The sun adorned the falls with the arc of a rainbow; a pleasing sight indeed. As they rejoined the wide and open road, the travellers came alongside a halted caravan train by the river, their attention drawn downstream by the sight of a grizzly bear. The bear seemed unfazed by the attention, and made its way along the river, oblivious to the shooting going on around it, but clearly having no desire to hang around. The travellers departed, seeking new ground and new vistas.

Here's one of those shots :-) A real live, non-captive grizzly bear! Wow!

Grizzly bear crossing the Vermillion River

Day 163: Elk

Day 1 of our week of touring in the Rockies with my mum and dad, and the first of many good wildlife sightings. We were driving along the Bow Valley Parkway and slowed down as I saw a handful of cars parked at the roadside. I pulled over and immediately opposite, feeding in the grass, was a large bull elk. Of course we couldn't resist hopping out of the car and joining the other snap-happy tourists for the photo-shoot. Not a bad way to start the tour :-)

Don't get too close...

Day 150: World photography day

Apparently today is World Photography Day so I wondered how I could make my contribution. In the evening we're going to a talk at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum on the Burgess Shale, and I figured I would take a walk over there to check where we have to go. Since I work at UBC, I get into the museum for free (yay!) so I took advantage of that to get a picture of the main attraction there, an enormous blue whale skeleton. I've seen one before at the Natural History museum in London, but somehow the scale didn't register, perhaps because it's hung in a very large hall. At the Beaty, the skeleton fills the space, and it feels like it's possible to get a closer look. I was really impressed as it dawned on me just how large these animals are. And it was great to get a close-up view of an animal I first heard about in the 1970s when Greenpeace launched their "Save the whale" campaign.

Blue whale bones

Day 137: Up close and personal

With harbour seals. Today we got closer to seals than I have ever done before in my life (with the exception of one at the Vancouver aquarium). Maria bought a Groupon voucher for Rocky Point kayaks and we used it to rent a "divorce boat" (i.e. a double kayak ;-) for a couple of hours. We haven't paddled in the Port Moody area before so we asked what the highlights were, and were pointed in the direction of the log booms where the seals (and their pups) tend to haul out.

The folks at the Rocky Point helpfully launched us into the water (so we didn't even have to get our feet wet!) and off we went. Within five minutes of paddling we were alongside a mother seal and her pup. The mother watched us with alert brown eyes as we drifted past on the incoming tide, the pup occasionally looking up to see what we were. We left them alone and paddled all of ten metres to find another mother seal and pup :-) This pattern kind of repeated itself for the next twenty minutes as we paddled around one log boom, before heading over to another with even more seals on it. It was an amazing experience to be so close - and by "close" I mean about 10-20 metres away, not in their faces. A couple of times we startled a seal into the water, and moved further away from the boom to give them space.

Since we were on the water, I had the old camera in hand with its very useful long zoom lens. I took about 40 seal photos :-) but this one was the best by far - the seal is one of the mothers, and her pup is just out of the frame to the left. I'll probably put the companion photo on Flickr anyway, as it's nice to see the two side-by-side.

Having run out of seals, we set off on the rest of our peaceful paddling adventure around the eastern end of Burrard Inlet. We finished up with fish and chips at Pajo's (fish - good, chips - meh) before driving home to catch the finale of the Celebration of Light. What a gorgeous way to spend a Saturday. And in case you're wondering, a divorce is not imminent ;-)

More photos from today are on Flickr.

Watchful seal

Day 122: Having a whale of a time

Today is the 22nd of July, one of two possible so-called "pi-days" in the year: 22/7, which as everyone learns in school is a reasonable approximation to pi (to 2 decimal places). The other day is the 14th of March, but that only works for people who use the American style of reporting the date - 3.14 (also to 2 decimal places). An interesting side note is that the American pi day will gain two more decimal places of accuracy in 2015, when 14th March can be written as 3.1415.

I was going to celebrate pi day by taking a picture of a drawing of a cake shaped as the letter pi which was scrawled on the blackboard outside my office a few weeks back. But then we took the ferry to Vancouver Island and saw orcas :-) How could I resist using an orca photo? That means I've seen orcas on the last three ferry trips to/from Vancouver Island, and in pretty much the same place each time too.

On another note, this post marks the one-third point of this project. Yikes! There have been a few (dreary) days lately where I really haven't felt like taking pictures. Have to keep working on that for the winter!

Orcas in Active Pass

Day 62: Pinnipeds to you too!

Before we left home, we'd booked a day tour with Terracentric Coastal Adventures to visit Mitlenatch Island which is about half-way between the mainland and Vancouver Island. It's a small remote island, home to the largest sea-bird nesting colony in the Strait of Georgia (or the Salish Sea as it is now known). As well as nesting season, May is also peak time for flowers on the island. Our trip was an all-day affair and included lunch on the island itself.

We did a floating circumnavigation of the island, the perfect way to admire the nesting gulls, pelagic cormorants and cute little red-footed pigeon guillemots on such a calm sunny day. But the highlight was awaiting us. We soon heard the sound of distant barking, which could mean only one thing: sea lions! We've seen only one since we moved to Vancouver, a fleeting glimpse of a large male off a beach on Vancouver Island. We even went on a wild-goose chase in search of sea lions when we were hiking the Juan de Fuca trail. The sound grew louder and we could now see a rocky shelf covered in 20 or so sea lions. (Then the aroma reached us...)

That was a real treat in itself, but around the headland we struck gold: a lone rock jutting out of the water was a siesta spot to at least 50 sea lions, a mixture of barking Californias and gutteral-growling Stellers. Our zodiac floated past, close enough for us to get some fantastic views. The shot of the rock plastered with pinnipeds (new word for me) won out as today's photo.

Once ashore we were treated to the amazing flower display first hand. On the return journey we saw a pod of Pacific white-sided dolphins, and back in Lund we were mesmerized by the hummingbirds at the feeders. What an amazing day!

A pile of pinnipeds

Day 59: Seal of approval

Today was a glorious sunny spring day. And I spent it indoors. I had plans to get up and go for a hike or snowshoe somewhere but that never got off the ground (or off the sofa depending on your point of view). It wasn't until the evening that I got outside, just as the high clouds ahead of the next weather system were moving in. Maria and I headed for the beach, parking up by Spanish Banks creek and walking east towards Jericho.

It was a fine evening and we found a way to make it even finer: savouring a pint on the balcony of Jericho Sailing Club with the best views in town. People were crab-fishing off the pier as usual, and the tide was high, right up under the pier. Keeping them company were three harbour seals, one of which regularly swam in close to the pier. An eagle flew overhead, no doubt off in search of food for its young.

We finished our drinks and walked down to the pier, where I stood waiting for the seal to pop its head up again. I didn't have to wait long before it appeared barely 10 m away. It swam slowly towards me and stopped a few metres out, looking me directly in the (camera) eye several times. That's undoubtedly one of the things that makes seals appealing (apart from looking like friendly big-eyed dogs), their willingness to make eye contact. It disappeared briefly before returning for a second look. I happily took another dozen photos, and even managed to take some steady video (for once).

In the meantime the sun had set. The light on the water turned golden and we took a steady walk back to the car. Tomorrow we're off somewhere new :-)

Inquisitive harbour seal