I enjoyed a birding tour in Fraser Foreshore Park in SE Burnaby, BC, this morning, led by George Clulow. I’ve taken a number of tours with George, who has a wealth of knowledge. The tour was part of a series organized by Burnaby Parks.
The mighty Fraser’s north arm as viewed from Fraser Foreshore Park
Selfie at the start of the tour
One of the highlights was hearing and spotting several sandhill cranes in flight
George answers lots of questions!
Checking out the viewpoint east of Byrne Rd.
It was fun to see a beaver!
It was a good morning, and George always emails a list of all the birds seen or heard.
Several large trees came down in Byrne Creek Ravine Park in southeast Burnaby in the windstorm today.
These toppled just a few meters from our townhouse complex. Sure glad the wind wasn’t blowing the other way!
Just by chance I saw the one that landed on the trail come down (the one with my foot for size reference). I’d just peeked out the front door this morning, and saw it come crashing down.
I was disappointed that my new LL Bean cargo pants have developed a tear on a seam after just four or five wears.
But I am impressed with LL Bean customer service: a new pair will arrive in three to four days, along with a prepaid label to send the faulty pair back.
Thanks!
Oh, yeah, and it took less than two minutes to get through to a customer service representative on the phone. Impressive.
I like the Bean because they have a wide variety of men’s clothing with long inseams and arm lengths.
I am very happy to post a positive comment today, because I’ve been feeling quite depressed and disillusioned in my volunteer stewardship efforts the last couple of weeks.
We live in an amazing country, Canadians.
Today I was working on a couple of letters to senior fisheries managers in Ottawa, as secretary for a volunteer advisory board to DFO. I wanted to check if I was writing to the appropriate people, so I searched the DFO online staff directory on their public website.
I found a couple of department and program Directors listed that appeared to be appropriate to my tasks, and there were phone numbers in addition to addresses. So I thought, what happens if I call?
What happened is that each Director personally answered the phone, and chatted with me about what I was trying to accomplish.
This is the first time in a long time that I’ve been able to say the phrase “my tax dollars at work” with a happy smile on my face.
Yumi and I wandered the Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary in Delta, BC, for hours today. Tired, but happy with the number of species spotted and successfully “shot”.
My self-assignment today was to walk Byrne Creek Ravine Park in SE Burnaby and shoot photos using only my 35-year-old Micro-Nikkor 55mm/3.5 all-manual macro lens. I had a great time, and here are 32 shots on Flickr.
The experience was stimulating. Limiting the technology, and reverting to all-manual focus and exposure really made me concentrate, and look, and think.
