Mail Strike tomorrow? Can I get mine via Owl, instead?

When I was little and we lived in a small town called Ajax, my sister joined Brownies, and my mom became a Snowy Owl. I was too young to join, but played in the back of the gym while the group met. I loved that my mom was a Snowy Owl. In my mind this meant she actually was and would at some point transform into one when the time was right. My mama used to tell me grand stories about the forest where she grew up when her papa worked in the lumber camp near Burks Falls. There was magic in them and she knew about it, so it was no surprise to me that she would achieve owl status. I was under the impression that all I had to do was turn 7 and I would witness this secret transformation.

We moved from Ajax to the country just as I was about to turn legal Brownie joining age. Which came as a bit of a relief, because although I likes the little belt with all the leather pouches, and the sash and shirt with the crests of achievement, I really was not into wearing the leotard and the skirt. I was more of a jean jacket/jeans girl and still am.

There's a place in Delta near the Reifle Bird Sanctuary that takes in wounded birds of prey. Aptly named O.W.L., (Orphaned Wildlife Rehabilitation Society) is such a cool place because they save these specific animals, and you can go there and look at some of the birds that were too wounded to be released back into the wild.

I am lucky enough to know a wonderful person named Bri Fudge. She is a living Saint to Animals. She posted photos on her Facebook wall from one of the places where she's a volunteer/animal advocate. These pictures she posted of her volunteer work at O.W.L. got me an inside look at a really cool place. I was blown away. A few weeks later she took us & a few of her other friends, on a tour of this wonderful magical place that is in dire need of funding. As soon as you walk into the main office you are greeted by Sarah, the absolutely incredible looking Barn Owl. She is stunning. It's hard to take your eyes off of this beauty, and you wonder how you have gone a whole lifetime without making a point to see one in real life before.

Outside there are a few giant cages that house a few lucky birds that now have a new way of life other than the one they were born into. Most of these birds were hit by cars and brought in by folks that stopped to see what was lying in the road, so they are lucky to be alive. Others hit windows or get caught in extreme weather. Sometimes the Eagles come in with their talons locked together. The priority is to release the wounded birds, but sometimes, it's just not possible if the bird is to survive.

Two residents are a pair of Great Grey Owls that live in a cage together. Samson & Delilah are so beautiful and totally owl shaped owls. They were hard to get a good photo of because they were hanging out in the back of the cage on this cold January day. I asked Bri if she goes into that cage and she said only when she has to. These two owls have dedicated their lives to caring for ANY baby bird brought into the society. They are very loving and know just how to rear a baby that can be released into the wild. This ability causes them to be extra protective of their space, and they have been known to attack if you enter their cage. I say those scars are a badge of dedication to be worn with honour.

I asked all sorts of questions, like the hard one - they are birds of prey, do they get fed live stuff? The answer is yes they do. And the things they are fed are raised just for these birds. They are raised without medication, and live happy healthy lives until they are fed to the birds. They collect toilet paper rolls and stuff to put in the mouse cages so they have a nice life, before they have what the Buddhists would refer to as- a Sky burial... even though these wonderful birds in particular can't get to the sky I like to believe it still counts.

This pretty female Snowy Owl wanted to show me how stunning she looks with her wings all flexed up so when I was alone at her cage taking a few pictures, she posed for a nice shot. I had no idea that these birds burrow on the ground. All this time I have been wandering the forests looking for owls, and many of them spend a of of time on the forest floor!

I was working on a wonderful little island called Bowen, and returning from the landscape center around 5PM when I saw a Barred Owl on a Hydro wire. I stopped the car on the side of the road, jumped out, and took a few shots. I was standing right under him snapping away. He was eyeing something rustling in the grass about a foot from my boot. I left before I bothered him too much. I was so stoked to see him. I look for him each time I round that corner, but have not seen him since.

Jerry's Cove- Where's that at?

I love Canada. That's why I recently voted against the 'person responsible' for running my country right now. (That's in quotes, because I am not sure if he's actually human, and quite sure he is irresponsible.) I worship nature. I am inspired by it, and in awe of it. In Canadian nature, anyone can easily find beauty in it practically everywhere you look, without even trying. But like a lot of other places on the planet, Corporations are really compromising the natural state of everything and I am not sure that my elected officials are doing enough to protect this beautiful country, or planet.

Maybe you heard about it maybe not - but there is a catastrophic oil spill going on in Alberta. In April a major pipeline broke and made a huge industrial disaster. The company responsible 'apologized' & A$$hole running our country put a media gag on it until after the election. So as not to rile the constituants, and because he is down and dirty with off-shore drilling and digging deep to suck our planet dry for personal profit. An oil slick, right smack dab in the middle of wilderness, in a precious marsh, and in the middle of breeding time. Clean-up is not happening as fast as the locals who do worship their land need it to be happening. I won't go into a huge rant about the TAR SANDS, I am attempting to keep this light hearted - but I also want to be informative. Any words you see in my blog that are coloured differently than the usual text can be CLICKED on for further detail...

Now back to today:

Today was yet another day we loaded the dogs into Jill's car and went to Jerry's Cove, commonly known as Jericho Beach. This is the place where everyone in my family loves to come. The dogs can run, Sparrow can chase sticks, Hawksley is off leash most of the time, unless we see a Bald Eagle, then he's on leash. We come here a lot, it's glorious. There's a huge duck pond with a beaver family living in it and building dams all over the place. And right now, it's baby bird time!

You can go here and walk right past the ponds to the beach and spend your time looking at the water or walking the shores, that's what I've been doing for the past 19 years, anyway. Tossing tennis balls or sticks for Alice or- now for Sparrow. Or you can come during Folk Fest and not even recognize the place because of the stages, and food booths, and throngs of people/folk.

It is just recently that I have actually gone out of my way to see birds and watch and photograph them. Much to Sparrow's chagrin, the distraction from me playing with him is not something he is impressed by. I have always noticed birds - of course and watched them or whatever, but now we go specifically to watch the habits of the birds around the pond and get some good pictures. This is all because of Mr. & Mrs. & Mrs Flicker across the street probably. They demanded my attention and my camera, then it became like a challenge to get a decent shot of the birds I see. Then one day at Jericho a Red-Winged Blackbird landed on Eliza's hand and started eating seeds!

She walked up to the edge of the pond and held out her hand and this male RWBB just landed right on her fingers. He had followed her from back near the little wooden bridge and sung a few songs at her. She had the feeling he would eat from her hand, and so she tried - he didn't hesitate a second. We returned to this spot for few days taking their photos, attempting to feed them again. Might have been more successful without the truffling Pug & Frisbie focused Border Collie...

I got some nice shots though. Months later I was there alone and a female landed on my hand and had a few seeds. Her little feet were cold and soft, she held on tight to my thumb and forefinger and ate some seeds for about forty-five seconds before flying off into the rushes. They are delightful.

Today, we saw so many different birds. It was noisy with birds. Probably because we haven't seen the sun the way we should be so they are taking advantage of the warm light and getting out of the nest. We were particularly lucky to see a Belted Kingfisher! He was hunting, and first caught my eye when he plunged into the water and emerged with a giant frog in his beak. He darted out of the water and up into the Willow hanging over the water and quickly swallowed the entire morsel of whoever that was.

Eliza stayed back with the dogs an dI wandered up slowly. He was too busy hunting to even care about me taking his photo. I took these pictures, and left him to hunt. We watched a crow chase him back and forth across the pond a few times and then he took off fast. The crow thought he won that battle, but the Kingfisher came all the way around the forest a few minutes later and started hunting from the Willow all over again.

This day at Jerry's Cove was just another day at the beach for us. How lucky are we? Lucky enough to know I have to pay attention to nature, and what my impact is on it. I want to be able to continue to have these days. Even after the catastrophe in Japan. So for all these beautiful birds that need clean water, I say NO to off-shore drilling, and NO to endless consumption of fossil fuel. We have the capacity to make great change. Let's just get at it already... start by going out into nature. See all that you have to lose.

Pretty in Pink...

Spring came late to Vancouver this year. Record high rainfall and record low temperatures still cast wet, grey days worthy of wool socks over us. I usually don't complain about the weather, since it's pretty much out of my control, but this sort of weather particularly sucks if you like the cherry blossoms. There are something like 119 varieties of flowering Cherry trees in Vancouver, and too much rain shortens their life by weeks. When I lived on the corner of Charles & Salsbury, just off Commercial Drive, I lived in a big heritage house once occupied by Japanese botany students. Back in the 30's, they spliced Pear branches on the Cherry trees down the boulevard directly in front of my house. When these trees were in full bloom they were the darkest of pink, huge fluffy pompom blossoms of the Kanzan -- Prunus serrulata 'Kwanzan' Cherry Tree, and then around the base of the pink, there was this delicate spray of white blossoms from the Pear branches. It was so pretty. A few years ago the city really 'pruned' the trees back and hacked off all the Pear branches. They have mostly filled out again, but bothered me a lot at the time. It seemed disrespectful somehow. Probably because I knew that not long after these branches were grafted onto these trees, the Japanese students were all rounded up and sent to the POW camps in Salmon Arm because of the 'unprovoked' attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941. Of course we have since learned that there is a lot more to that one sided account.

Lucky for us, we have dogs, because we are thereby obligated to go out and walk a few times a day no matter what the weather. The Border Collie always wants to go out, the Pug likes a warm bed, but the big dog ALWAYS wants a walk. So this year, despite the rain, I took my dogs, Eliza & camera and walked amid the wet blossoms. Sometimes we were lucky and the sky would break for a few minutes. The birds were as busy as usual, maybe even more than usual actually. I was taking this Cherry Blossom shot when this little Black Capped Chickadee landed in my shot, what a guy!

This year we bought a new bird house for the back porch over at Jill's. It's really sweet. I hung it and not 5 minutes later a Chickadee popped his head in for a look at the new local real estate. They haven't moved in yet, I think they want to make sure it is in a permanent location before going to a lot of trouble decorating. This little Junko spends a lot of time under the cedar hedge next to the parking lot. I love his little Rosy breast. The House Finch is a real beauty, he feeds his fat fledgling all day long off the feeder, and this Northern Flicker proves everyone looks good in pink!

I am still carefully monitoring the Flicker nest across the street. They start their day around 5:15 AM. Their loud "PEER!" pipes up and then you hear the response from a half a block away. We saw them move their eggs a few weeks ago - you can see video in my archive - but then he mated with his other lady for a few days. Now he seems to be Pappa over 2 nests, with 2 ladies. We hope we see the fledglings. If they do hatch it should be over the next week or so...

They keep busy eating off of our suet paddles when the starlings aren't pigging out. I heard from the Prof at UBC who studies cavity nesting. She is stoked to see the video. She wondered if the egg shells were empty, but in the video you can see practically the whole egg, and as Eliza noted, when he flies, you can see the egg has weight he has to compensate for. It's all very exciting!

Eagle Vs. Poodle

If you live in BC and ever bother to look up, or if you're like me and spend most of your time staring at the sky, chances are you will see a Bald Eagle. I have often seen them circle overhead, traveling or hunting. Going from Burnaby Mountain to Deep Cove without ever flapping a wing, just riding the wind current across the water, or across the city.

That in itself is a wonderful thing, considering that this bird was once on the endangered species list. For now, here in Vancouver we still have quite a few large trees to deal with this kind of traffic, but with urban infringement we lose more and more habitat for not only an eagle's nest, but for all the birds and animals that live in that habitat.

In the Port of North Vancouver, there was a big old place that TV shows and feature films used to film in because it was abandoned, so you could work into the wee hours without disturbing residentials. It was called Versatile Shipyards. It's all expensive condos now, but just a few years ago it was these huge abandoned shipyards, covered with tons of corrugated aluminum, and built out of old growth douglas fir. Beams two and a half feet wide and forty feet long... hundreds of them. This place stood on some glorious old wilderness that once made ideal breeding grounds for these Eagles.

One morning at 5 AM, while working on a Disney movie at the time, I had reason to find myself down at these really old shipyards, and standing out on the end of a sixty foot pier. I had been standing there for about fifteen minutes, watching the sun come up to my left, and listening to the water lap against the struts. I happened to look to my right, I guess for the first time, because standing beside me about six feet away, was the biggest prehistoric creature I had ever seen. It came up to just under my shoulder in height and it's body was twice the size of my dog's. It looked at me with his giant yellow eye and slowly opened his wings, which hung off of huge muscular shoulders. I realized it was a Bald Eagle - about the size of a seven year old child. He held his arms out for a second, standing still looking at me, like, 'watch this'. Then at the same time he slowly looked away, he just tipped forward and dropped off the end of the pier.

His body arced back and his wings reached out sharp on either side of his huge brown body, his huge feet stretched tight against his powerful white tail.

The drop was about ten feet to the water, in that short distance he caught enough air to glide across and then up, higher and higher. He flapped his wings only a few times to gain more lift, and was within moments high above me, and halfway across the inlet. I was awestruck. Looking up in the sky you think they look big, but there's no real scale to judge. Seeing an giant old one standing just a few feet away was just something profound. I realized that he was there the whole time, and was just so big, he didn't register in my head, so I didn't even see him-

I have always meant to go to Brackendale, near Squamish, BC in the early spring. They do a Bald Eagle count there every year because it's the place where the salmon spawn and Eagles nest and breed. Next year for sure.

The other day we went to Deep Cove. we saw a Bald Eagle flying overhead with something white & rather large. We hoped it was just a Seagull, and not a cat or dog. There were crows chasing it relentlessly, but the Eagle just flew, low above the trees and disappeared from our view. When we got to the beach, we saw 3 more Eagles hunting. I took some video of the ruckus the crows can cause when one of the Eagles decides to land on a familiar roost. See video, below...

We keep our pug on a leash whenever there is an Eagle sighting. They have been known to grab small dogs right out from under their unsuspecting owner's nose. We had always hoped this was just an urban myth, but time and time again we hear first hand accounts. No one ever blames the Eagles, they are just hunting. Loss of food and habitat makes wild animals look elsewhere for survival. Lots of birds and animals adapt to our sloppy ways only as a last resort, they don't want to be domestic - they have no other choice. Apparently this year there are practically no salmon. None for the fishermen, none for the Eagles. And now, with dear Japan's compromised reactors relentlessly weeping nuclear devastation into the Pacific Rim, we have no idea what next year, or century for that matter- will hold.

There are several Bald Eagle Cams you can watch online. They are smart enough to NOT publish the actual physical location of these nests, so that thousands of folks don't show up to see it, but there are hundreds of Eagle nests all over the lower mainland and on the islands. If you have the dream to see a nest with your own eyes, it's possible with out even leaving the city. They are profoundly huge. Like the size of a VW beetle, suspended ninety feet above in the top of a giant fir, usually.

Important Northern Flicker Discovery!

Okay, things are back to normal on BLOGGER, and so I will attempt to share with you the most spectacular footage! The Northern Flicker doing something never before recorded, or seen - well, actually we saw this same family do this last year and no one believed us when we asked around about it. This year we got pictures AND video to back up our claims.

Without further ado, the official FIRST TIME EVER REPORT:

FLICKER MOVES THEIR EGGS!

Filmed by Jenny Macintosh & witnessed by Jenny Macintosh & Eliza Hargreaves for 2 years running:

It happened the same way last year. We watched the return of the Flickers, then the loud and colourful mating displays for weeks - followed by a quiet pause. Then one day we saw Mrs. Flicker leave the nest with an egg in her beak, HER OWN EGG! She returned mere moments later and got the next, and the next five times that we saw.

This year we watched the mating dance and then the quiet time followed. I kept my camera at the ready and we watched the nest from our side window. Not all the time around the clock, but pretty regularly. One morning over breakfast Eliza saw the first egg being moved and exclaimed! I tossed down my plate and grabbed my camera. I knew i had to be discreet because I didn't want to risk startling them or interrupting this delicate process. I crouched behind a parked car and took a still shot first to make sure I got at least SOME proof. Mr. Flicker returned and I took 2 videos of the move. It was spectacular! So lucky that we caught it happening again!

Apparently this sort of behavior for cavity nesting creatures is really unprecedented. I am trying to get this information to a cavity nesting expert at UBC, but she hasn't called me back yet.

A visit to Reifle Bird Sanctuary

Located near the precious Burns Bog in Delta BC is a very special place for birds of all species. In the heart of the Fraser River Estuary, The Reifle Bird Sanctuary provides shelter for some of the most spectacular birds our planet has to offer. Jill and I went on the spur of the moment back in December. About a 20 minute drive straight up Oak street and out of the city to Delta, and we were there. We walked around through the ponds with our cameras and a dollar bag of duck food. The mallards greeted us immediately begging for a taste. They glowed in the sunshine.

This first day we went there were some rare Night Herons roosting on a tree in the sun. Three of them the colour of Kingfishers and the size of the mallards, really small when I am used to seeing the Great Grey Heron or the Blue. We wound around the estuaries and were awed by the beautiful natural flow of the place. There is water on both sides of the path and no matter where you look, some bird is busy doing something.
We came around one corner and saw something that looked prehistoric - Sandhill Cranes - 3 of them! They stood about 5 feet tall. They were a little intimidating and wanted the corn we had left. The male was a little threatening but I wasn't thinking he was going to attack us or anything - Jill was totally terrified that he would. He would sort of block us from passing until we dumped a pile of food for his wife and daughter. A bit of a challenge for the food, it was only fare - it's their turf and we wanted to take pictures...

There are a few families of these cranes the further we walked. Each time the male would demand some food so we could pass. They were by no means tame - but seemed to know that we would have something for them.

On the very west side of the sanctuary, we could hear a really loud disturbance in the distance. Snow Cranes, thousands of them, preparing to roost for the night. They were spread across the horizon like a lace table cloth blowing on a clothesline, swaying back and forth together honking and flapping. The ruckus was so fantastic that the male Sandhill Crane standing beside me, stood there watching with worried fascination the whole time - totally as amazed at this as I was, like he'd never seen it before either. I wished I was closer than the 2 kms away that I was. It looked spectacular even from that distance.

I mentioned earlier that we decided to go to this sanctuary on the spur of the moment, and also say for the record that I am an amateur photographer... so it is here, just after the Snow Goose display on the west side of the bird sanctuary, at the peak of golden hour, that I run out of battery life for my camera.
The next time we went, was also last minute, but I had a charged battery. The song birds were just returning to nest. Tree swallows and Jenny Wrens sang and darted over the water. The Sandhill cranes are now sitting on eggs in the midst of the water far from the coyotes and the humans. Bald Eagles circled constantly overhead. And tons of different ducks waddled everywhere, bobbing heads and courting their ladies.
The first time I went to Mr. Spark's cottage in Fenelon Falls I saw his father in-law's decoy collection. They asked me my impression. I thought it was oddly interesting. I didn't really approve of them, so you lure ducks to land with these and then shoot the ones that are alive? Gross. I hated hunting. Most of the decoys were plain and brown I guess the idea being that a female would attract more males... so then they show me one from the top shelf. It's all crazy painted, like a clown. Tons of colour and stripes and spots. Was that one my favorite one they asked? I thought it looked a little too over done, I remember saying and the room filled with laughter. I had no idea until years later that it was a male Wood Duck. When I discovered that that was a REAL duck, I knew I just had to see one in real life. Thirty-five years later at this Reifle Bird Sanctuary, I saw my first one!

After taking these pictures, I did a little research. I love how everything in nature has it's own little bit of detail that distinguishes it from all others. This unique looking duck has claws so it can nest in the cavities of trees!

This wonderful place is somewhere I will return to often. I highly recommend it for anyone who enjoys nature...

Vancouver ÷ all other birds = Crows

Bawlckey in the winter on the Birch treetop.

If you live in Vancouver long enough you'll come to notice a common theme among artists of any kind. I have never seen one specific common denominator like this before and when you do notice it, it's like a phenomenon. In paintings, sculptures, photography, on purses, t-shirts patches and tea towels, tattooed on bodies... the subject writings from songs & short stories to Fringe plays;

Crows. And it's not a mystery as to why. Here in Vancouver, each night at dusk, the sky is full of them. Millions of them, well hundreds of thousands at the very least. Murder after murder traveling east to a common roost just outside the city in Burnaby. They start just before the sun begins to set. Just a few at first. Then from a good vantage point, you can see them appear. Each one starting as a mere pin prick sized ink spot against the sunset until they pass over head twenty or even a hundred at a time cawing and flapping home for the night.

Personally I have always loved loud, cheeky, black crows. Ravens too, of course but I don't see those guys as often in the city. When I lived off the drive a baby crow fell out of the cedar tree on the front lawn. We lived in a huge house with about 10 suites and about 23 cats... so naturally, at least naturally for me, I tried to save it. My neighbour Pascal even tried to climb the poor little guy back up and set him back in. She had to have climbed up about 75 feet into that cedar - in less than 2 minutes I might add on an impressed note - but the nest was out on a limb too far for her to reach to put him in safely.

He looked almost old enough to fledge, so I decided to put him in Jill's empty apartment across that I had keys to because I was painting it. I got a little crate and fed him with an eye dropper fro a few days. The mother crow would swoop down and tap me on the head with her feet as I left the Chateau Gil where he was staying, and went back to my home in Charlesbury Manor. Sadly, this little crow didn't make it. Sadly because I would have loved a pet crow - or loved to have released him after he got older. My reasonable friend at the time told me the mother pushed him out because there was something wrong with him in the first place... Anyway - that isn't where I was going with this today.

It's about Bawlckey. Bawlckey is a charming crow that lives on my block during the day, and flies with ALL the rest of them to Burnaby at night. I like to think he is about 5 years old and has a sister and a mother and a father and 3 cousins that visit his zone regularly. Zone meaning I think all the crows have a regular zone that they go to each day and then like a well trained military they find treasures and secure locals and report back to the boss and such. They seem pretty organized to me, anyways.

So Bawlckey first started thinking I was pretty great because we have two picky cats on a raw food diet and I hate waste, so we formed a symbiotic relationship. If I threw the untouched raw chicken, or beef, or salmon into our garbage, it would stink up the house or outdoor garbage within hours. Also, it was a real waste of not just money, but more importantly, something died for that meal and the cats would often not feel like eating, or whatever- and the food would just sit there to the point that it should be dealt with, i.e. thrown out - wasted.

Bawlckey was the happy answer! One cold rainy day, he "BAWLCKED!" at me and I was emptying the cat dishes, so I opened the screen door and tossed a clump onto the lawn. He didn't hesitate to swoop down and investigate. He apparently found it suitable and took it to the vacancy sign on Steve;s lawn and ate it. I had more left, but after only one clump, he flew off. I set the cat dish down on the counter and proceeded to clean the kitchen. After about 10 minutes, I hear, BAWLCK!BAWLCK!BAWLCK! so I look out, and there is Bawlckey, on that same certain branch, shouting at me to bring out the dish of food! So I go out and toss a chunk, and out of no where, crows began to descend onto the lawn. 7 of them in total. I fed them each a morsel of meat and found a few other things to toss out to them. Everything I eat is organic, and most of it local so there are safe things I can toss out for them on days where I know they are hungry.

Anyway, by rights, I should have done my first blog about Bawlckey because he is the first wild bird I have had a real long-term relationship with, one I will take great pleasure in describing from time to time, because he is quite a character. For instance, he follows us on our dog walks and swoops down and taunts my border collie Sparrow all the time. Deliberately. He is so bossy.

I have this thing that I do, at first it was just to make Eliza laugh, but now I do it because I think it's hilarious. No matter where I am, Vancouver, Toronto, the island, whenever I see a crow, I say to that crow, "What are you doing here Bawlckey?!" Like he's the same guy everywhere I go. It's like you have your own magical crow following you around with out the tricky logistics of that really happening...