I took advantage of a day off and sunny skies to head up the Sea to Sky a ways north of Vancouver today. One of my favourite places to stop is Porteau Cove Provincial Park.
Foggy Byrne Creek Ravine Park Walk
After we got back from birding on Boundary Bay today, we decided we still needed a bit more exercise, so we did a Byrne Creek Ravine loop in the fog.
Boundary Bay Dyke Attracts International Photo Gearheads
There were great gaggles of homo sapiens sapiens photographerensis on the Boundary Bay dyke near 72nd today.
This is fast becoming an international destination for nature photogearheads. There must have been nearly half a million dollars of photo gear on the dyke today.
And this is what had all the photogs salivating today — likely the same short-eared owl that I shot there a week or two ago. This owl ought to get an agent and start cashing in 
.
Barnet Marine Park Birding
George Clulow led another of his informative birding walks for Burnaby Parks this morning at Barnet Marine Park.
Sorry honey, Christmas is Long Gone
Aw, sorry honey, Christmas is over. . .
Took down all the lights today. Sigh.
Kitty is mourning the Xmas tree again this year.
I finally took it down today, and “butchered” it in the garage, keeping it for campfire kindling this coming camping season.
And just as in previous years, Choco the Cat has been crying at the door to the garage, going in and sniffing at the remains, and repeating the process.
Seven-Day B&W Photo Challenge
I was asked to participate in the seven-day B&W photo challenge.
Seven days, seven black-and-white photos of your daily life. No people. No pets. No explanation.
I started on New Year’s day and posted my seventh shot today. Here they all are in chronological order:
Foggy South Burnaby Walk
My near-daily ravine and south slope walk in SE Burnaby was shrouded in a lovely fog today that made everything look mysterious and beautiful.
Converted this last shot to B & W
Burnaby Lake Bird Action
Lots of birds, lots of people feeding birds, and lots of photographers shooting birds at Burnaby Lake’s Piper Spit today.
Mallard mosh pit action, with a few other species thrown in
Shake your booty!
Another photographer said this Snow Goose had been hanging around on its own near Piper Spit for several days
Pileated Woodpecker
Love the lines on this Northern Pintail
Poinsettia Cat
Twas a morning between Christmas and New Year’s and not a creature was stirring because she’d already found a comfy place on the dining room table
Year-End Digital Data Backup
I back up regularly, but I also make a point of making sure I have fresh images of my main computer hard drive, and backups of all data drives, at the end of the year.
There’s no such thing as having too many backups — both onsite and offsite.
Yes, make sure you also have a backup stored with a relative, or at a trusted friend’s place. Or in a safety deposit box.
My project for this cold and rainy afternoon was to check my drives and backups.
My 3TB D: drive, which is dedicated to photos, was near capacity, while my 2TB C: drive was 80% free. I’d been contemplating upgrading to 4TB-plus on D:, but ended up moving several hundred GB of old photos from D: to C:, giving me enough room on D: to keep me going well into the new year.
Now setting up backups of the new configuration to my NAS (network attached storage) RAID drives.
Again: there is no such thing as too many backups!