💛FLUFFY LITTLE DUMPLINGS! My best duckling video EVER

Haven't seen ANY birds for ever so long. The back yard is deserted! I've complained about this before, so I'll shut up now, but I honestly do not know what is going on, because everywhere we go now is virtually deserted. The neighbors across the back fence folded their tents in the night and disappeared in the weirdest "move" I ever saw. One day they were there, shouting and smoking pot with the dog yapping and strangling, and now the place looks scoured and abandoned. This seems to indicate sketchiness, because moving typically involves lots of hubbub and yells and boxes and vans and general mayhem, and there was NONE of that, not even by professional movers. What breaks my heart is that their two cats are gone, too - daily visitors to our yard, a sweet ginger and a handsome tuxedo. Both gone, along with all the birds. But here I have a record of just a few ducklings, the only ones I saw this year. What is going on?

What happened to Bosley. . . . . .

I received this email just now, regarding a post I did in 2016. I feel a little too stunned to write about it now. We were pretty certain Bosley had died/been killed (he looked more like a domestic duck than a wild one, and whenever we see domestic ducks in the wild, we know they will not last long).

It's a sense of loss that I've already had for a couple of years. I tell myself: it's nature, it's the life cycle, etc. But Bosley wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, duckwise, and more than once I saw him waddling around on land. Once he was actually being chased by a mallard drake. But I think it may have been a predator that got him, as coyotes, bears and even cougars roam around within our city limits. The other thing is, I never did see him fly, and if he was bred for meat, as many ducks are, perhaps his wing capacity was too limited to get him out of trouble.

Anyway, here is her message, and I will try to assemble a proper memorial when I can.

"I found the duck you write about dead in the water over by the playground area. I called him Shep. He was my friend for 9 years. The brown one that hung around with him went missing 3 weeks ago. I looked for her everyday since. Today when I was at the lake I saw a huge amount of feathers float down the lake from the same area I found Shep. I know it hah to be Belinda as you called home. I believe the Mallards may have drowned him during mating time. I witnessed a few big mallards weeks prior chasing/harassing him so I am guessing rough play during mating season was the cause of his death. When Shep died a few years ago Bentley was extremely sad. He searched for Shep calling him for a long time. The green mallard that hung around with Shep and Bentley went missing a few months after. Him and Shep were very close. The three of them were bonded. I believe the green mallard was so depressed he stopped eating and got weak for predictors. Bentley lived 2 years and 2 weeks without them. After some time after his friends deaths, he paired up with a mallard and a female brown duck. They were friends for a long time until his demise 3 weeks ago. They are all in heaven now swimming together. I hope this information answered your questions and put your mind at rest. Don’t feel sad, they had a great life and now they are finally all together at last.

Shep died April 14, 2020,he was 9 years old, his mallard friend died August of same year, and Belinda (was really a he), he died 3 weeks ago. Sorry, I got the Belinda and Bentley names mixed up in my last post. Hope this sorts it out for you."

Here is my reply:

We were pretty sure something had happened to him - we used to see him every time we went there, then it just stopped. I am not sure if nine years is a long time for a duck, but I think it is for one living in the wild. And now his companion as well - I do remember the three of them swimming around together. This takes away something of the
magic of the lake. It seems almost deserted now, which baffles me. I know birds are very cyclic, but I'm not seeing a lot of birds anywhere now, not even at Burnaby Lake which is usually teeming with them. I appreciate your letting me know what happened. I know this is all part of nature, but I still feel the loss. I will miss him and "Belinda" and the drake. Nature does very interesting things, as in creating a little flock of three.

So they are all gone - the odd little flock of three (which we suspected were all male, though Belinda was so gorgeous with her curly tail, and MASSIVE - more the size of a goose). I have seen domestic birds (most recently, a glorious white dove which ate out of my hand) 

and even white waddly barnyard creatures, three of them, then two, then one - easy pickings for birds which are not "street-smart" in the wild. 

Sadly, this year Como Lake is practically deserted. Our lagoon is also very sparse, except in one of the lookouts which was 2 inches deep in goose shit! It was as if someone had just dumped a barrel of it on the boards. A goose convention? We've seen them before, a sort of stopover, usually VERY loud. We have also seen sandhill cranes, a red-tailed hawk and five wild swans in our lagoon. Why is all the magic being taken away? When will they return?

This crow is completely CRAZY!

The crow I recently encountered on Lafarge Lake was acting very strangely. It was standing on the banks rattling its beak menacingly, and raucously cawing its head off. Periodically he (she? I can't really tell them apart) would charge at one of the mallards which was peacefully sitting at the lakeside. I've never seen behaviour like that before. If it were nest-guarding, which crows are notorious for doing, I think it would have been dive-bombing me and all the other (many) passersby in the park. But he just stood there, sometimes strutting back and forth, making the loudest, ugliest crow sounds I have ever heard.

The ducks, strangely enough, stood their ground. One was scared into the water, but after that, they stood or sat stodgily, as if to say, we won't tolerate this interloper. Ducks are placid, but they also have a certain gravitas. They are not easily perturbed. Any goose would have made short work of this crow, lowering its neck, hissing and charging at him, but the ducks just had a sort of "we shall not be moved" attitude.

But why try to scare off ducks? How could a duck ever reach a crow's nest, and what sort of interest would it have even if it could? There are plenty of ground-dwelling predators capable of climbing trees and picking off tender crow fledglings. Raccoons, skunks, weasels and ferrets, even squirrels have been known to raid nests. And let's not start on the eagles, hawks and falcons, and even the owls which could easily swoop down and snatch a whole nest.

But this crow was attacking ducks. Placid mallards which didn't want their afternoon snooze disturbed. Ducks who were just waiting for the next handout, the inevitable, forbidden tourist-feed. 

I had a passing thought that the crow was injured, but he seemed so able-bodied, so muscular and glossy (thus my use of "he", though I could be wrong) that it didn't make sense. He did not stir from the banks in all the time we spent at the lake, photographing Bosley and Belinda, our favorite duck couple. When we left, he was still cawing raucously and walking back and forth. Strutting, rather, aggressively. My only conclusion is that he saw birds, and birds meant threat, so he was going to get rid of them forthwith. 

Death to the squirrels!

I don't know why squirrels hate each other so much. Their furious vocalizing is like the worst kind of vile, nasty profanity, and it goes on and on by the hour. In this case, three of them seemed to be fighting over the same piece of turf - a clump of bushes in the corner of the back yard that "belongs" to a little red squirrel, who is even more nasty and aggressive. Is this place a particularly good source of food, shelter - what? Or just desirable because all the other squirrels want it?

In this case, a squirrel finally left the scene, followed by another, but they quickly chased each other back into the bush and started it up again. Strangely enough, a bunch of robins had a big squabble in the same bush for no reason I could determine. 

At about the 2:30 mark, Bentley comes around to lighten the mood a little, though the squirrels never stop swearing. They swear themselves hoarse, and it seems to go on all afternoon. At the 4:00-ish mark, you can see a squirrel sitting paralyzed on the fence post, no doubt suffering from squirrel PTSD.

The thumbnail isn't a real picture, so you can relax. I photoshopped it out of two other pictures. I've never seen squirrels actually fight, though some have big scars and chunks of fur missing from their tatty coats. A few have almost no hair at all on their tails, giving them a ratlike appearance. But that may be more from narrowly escaping coyotes, cougars and other predators than from fighting each other.

PEW PEW PEW

It took me a long time to figure out what that "pew-pew-pew!" noise was in the back yard. I heard it nearly every night, and it would get faster and faster until it turned into a sort of hysterical whistling and shrieking. I always assumed it was a particularly irritating sort of bird, but I could never see what it was.

I know what it is now. It's a squirrel.

This is a particularly aggressive red squirrel who loves to chase off any birds who try to get at "his" food source, the two bird feeders, plus any fallout on the ground. He also "owns" the very desirable real estate in the corner of the yard, a clump of bushes and trees which he often has to defend against those evil warlords of suburban wildlife, the Black Squirrels. 

This squirrel gets so worked up, I fear for its mental health at times. Maybe that's where the expression "squirrely" comes from.

Bird in the bush

One of my more poetic nature videos. I shot this from very far away, through a window with a screen in it, but it lent the video a fey, almost mystical quality. Well, maybe. It's pretty wobbly, because I had a hard time keeping the bird in my sights and even had to edit out a big chunk where I lost it altogether (which is why I substituted music for my "fuuuuuck"s on the sound track).  I am not sure what bird it is - perhaps a robin, with that fat, rounded body, or a varied thrush. At one point it appeared to be asleep, with one foot drawn up.

Sometimes it strikes me with a shock of surprise that all this was out in the yard for the past thirty years, and I paid not the slightest bit of attention to it. Now, suddenly, a wonderland has opened up for me. What else am I looking at and not seeing?

What's that bird?

Gosling disaster!

This was just so sad. A very small gosling had slipped through a grate across a stream, leading to a waterfall that made it impossible for it to get back to its parents. They were honking frantically as they tried to get to it.  A man climbed over the side of the bridge to rescue the gosling, with predictable results: it ran into the brush and disappeared. Now that I think about it, an adult might have been able to rescue it by either picking it up in its beak and flying away, or shuffling it onto its back. I've seen newly-hatched goslings ride their parents' backs before.

It doesn't seem likely this ended well, but as usual, it probably had more of a chance if we humans had stayed out of it.

Not interfering is so hard. I saw a lone duckling running around frantically a few weeks ago, peeping and peeping as if trying to find its mother and siblings. The other day I saw a tiny gosling in a group of half-grown ones, which were hissing at it and poking it savagely. I tried to get it out of there, only to have it run into the woods. My feeling was: if I can only get it into the water, it will have a better chance against predators. But the water was only a few feet away, and it seemed to prefer the shelter of a flock (even a hostile one). I've seen this a few times before, and I don't want to think too much about the inevitable conclusion. Mother Nature can be such a bitch.

Bosley's great adventure!

Bosley is the name we gave to a very strange duck who lives with a flock of mallards in Como Lake. We kept wondering why a very large, piebald duck would hang around with wild birds like that. He looked more like a domestic duck than a wild one. Finally, unable to get any information about him, I sent a gif of him swimming to the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, one of the world's foremost institutions of aviana/birdology.

They got back to me right away, to my surprise, telling me that their best guess is that he's a hybrid of a mallard and a magpie duck, a large-ish domestic duck raised for meat. (See example below). It made sense. These ducks are black-and-white, whereas Bosley's markings have the mottled brown tones of a mallard - in particular, a female.

So it shouldn't have surprised us to see a male mallard chasing after her. She was waddling around on land - the first time we've seen her (him? Still not sure) do that. We've been watching her for a couple of years now, and it's amazing how we see her almost every time we visit.  Once when all the mallards had flown away, we saw him (her?) in the very middle of the lake, dabbling and paddling around alone.

I can see why one of Bosley's parents would want to run away from home if he or she were about to become dinner. But it is obvious this is a true adoption. I mean, if the rest of the flock wants to mate with you. . .  The mallard drake might have been pursuing (her) romantically, or chasing (him) off as a rival. But now that I look at that mottled brown breast, I seriously wonder if Bosley is really a Boslette.

It's a funny video, and unique among all our Bosliana.

BLOGGER'S FOOTNOTE. I found a very strange group of pictures of ducks very similar to Bosley (see example, above) - only they were even more mallardy (or mallardly) than our Bos. I say more mallardly because some of them even had the iridescent green heads of the mallard drake. This was on a duck forum of some kind, and everyone took a guess at what kind of ducks these were. They came up with half a dozen names of very exotic-sounding purebred breeds. Fuck, guys! These are bastard pretenders, the love children of two duck species, and you cannot admit it because mallards are just too common. They're like pigeons, really. Only little kids like them.

And magpie ducks.

Are these magpie/mallard hybrids?

Balloons don't suck, but they blow

My God, I am so glad I am not the only one who hates this horrible, disgusting practice! It is ubiquitous for all sorts of occasions, happy or sad, weddings and funerals and christenings and divorces and this and that, and apparently not one person considers the consequences, or else they'd stop it. For some reason most people don't even think about where all that latex goes, or just sort of assume it dissipates into the air and disappears. If we can't see it, it can't be there, and certainly couldn't be doing any harm.

I'd like to know the stats on how often this is done every day worldwide, and how many TONS of filthy shredded latex end up casually discarded in the environment, the air and the water and the forest and city streets, along with countless masses of those nice curly lengths of ribbon that can choke magnificent marine life to death. Slowly.

Aside from all the animals it kills, balloon releases are kind of like firing tons of used condoms into the air and somehow seeing nothing wrong with the practice, even viewing it as something so beautiful and meaningful that other concerns are trivial and unimportant. Yet if you say anything about it, you get hurt or astonished looks from people, as if you've said, "I like to stomp on Easter chicks". 

And just try NOT attending a balloon release in protest. Whether you explain it to people or not, it will be extremely awkward, the kind of thing that prompts a down-inflected "oh," while you honestly wonder if they think you're just an antisocial crank. "Oh come on, we know you don't like it, but they're going to do it anyway, you know? Be a good sport."

Everyone loves balloon releases, don't they? They're a way for people to express their deepest emotions. To "let go and let God". And for heaven's sake, they can't be harmful or they wouldn't sell them. (You're not one of those whackjob environmentalists, are you?) There it is right on the package: biodegradable.

Alternatives to the colorful aerial spectacle, whatever they might be, aren't given much play because nobody has really thought about it. It hasn't occurred to them they could do something else. Why should we, when we can go down to the dollar store and have them fire up the helium tank? It's what we always do, we do it every year, the kids would be disappointed if we blah blah blah, and anyway it hasn't done a bit of harm. 

Has it?

What's behind this bizarre and extremely selfish practice is something so naive that I can barely wrap my mind around it. People still seem to think God lives "up there", and that these overinflated multicolored condoms are somehow going to carry everyone's grief and hope and joy STRAIGHT UP TO GOD, where it will of course be dissipated into pure light by the power of divine grace. Soggy multicolored condoms raining down from the sky don't even enter the picture. So it's worth "whatever", isn't it, all that stuff you're so bothered about? It's a spiritual practice, for heaven's sake, and God wouldn't mind if we do it just this once.

https://balloonsblow.org/

Take these broken wings

The first time a blackbird flew down to eat out of my hand at Burnaby Lake, my hair stood on end (figuratively speaking). From the time I was a little girl, I longed to have a bird light on my hand, and  I even used to stalk them, wondering why they always flew away.  A mean neighbor kid said I could catch a bird if I put salt on its tail, and I literally went tromping around with a salt shaker in my hand for the longest time. I also took home baby birds I found on the ground, which I now realize was a mistake: in many cases the parent birds are still feeding them. I've seen nearly-full-grown crows screaming after their parents, still wanting a handout. The birds I took home nearly always died, or were so close to being adults that they just flew away on their own.

But birds.

I lost my beloved Paco a couple of years ago, and it still hurts. How it hurts. The bond between bird and human isn't understood unless you have it. Most people say it's "only a bird". Now that we know more about the intelligence of ravens and crows, attitudes are changing. Paco was a sweetheart, a violet-blue lovebird who at only a few weeks old was highly sociable and smart. Then, only a few weeks in, I found her dead in her cage.

Losing Paco led indirectly to gaining Bentley, but our attachment to Bentley was amplified, I am sure, by the loss of Paco. Bentley, too, came from a difficult background. No one quite knows the extent of the trauma, but I am sure he would have died had someone not rescued him in time. Covered with dog bites and nearly emaciated, he was found wandering around Surrey, the toughest neighborhood in the lower mainland. He had no tattoo, no chip, nothing to identify him, but he clearly wasn't feral. Once he recovered he turned out to be a wonderful pet. His loyalty and protectiveness towards us is a palpable thing. He is simply dear.

But these, my wild birds, I still have. It was a delight when the first bird of spring descended. Over the winter we kept hearing the delightful ker-squeege of their song high in the bushes, but no birds ever came down. The ones I saw up there looked immature. Even now they are still a little shy of full adulthood, their feathers a bit mottled with juvenile camouflage. The big, lusty males of last summer must be off nesting somewhere.

These are a comfort to me, because to be honest, I have lost so much over the past several years that I can't begin to count the blows. I am sort of afraid of totting it all up. Some of it was stuff or people I had to walk away from, because it or they had become suffocating. Some was simply taken from me. Life is about loss, no matter what our shallow, striving, materialistic culture might think (if you can attribute thinking to it at all).

You don't try to get it back, and there are no compensations. Not really. You just keep going, and going, into the unknown.

Night predators

For once, I grabbed the camera at the right time, while the pack was howling. I shot out the window, and as it was after midnight it wasn't possible to see anything, but the primal sound is plain.

This is another night sound, a familiar one. I love the weird trills and hyena-laughs of the urban pack, but am relieved to be at a distance. So is Bentley, who was not happy while I was making this video. He was glad when I closed the window.

His fur goes up when he hears them. He can't help it. We don't know if it was a dog or a coyote, or even a pack of coyotes, that attacked him before we adopted him. All we know is that he was bald on top where he had been shaved down. There were healed puncture-wounds on his skin, and it takes a lot to puncture the skin of an animal. He had been pretty badly mangled. Though he is completely healed now, when he leans forward a certain way I can see tiny bald patches all over his shoulders, his badge of survival.  Probably only his mother can see them.

Does he have a bit of kitty PTSD? He's reserved, but not a scaredy-cat. He stands his ground. He doesn't knock you down with affection, but is extremely loyal and attached to both of us, even protective of us. Not every cat is that way.

I hope to get an owl video some night. Or coyotes and owls at the same time. I am getting very involved with neighborhood noises, and sounds in general. I have the hearing of a dog, which I sometimes wish I didn't have. Maybe it's compensation, because I've never been able to see worth a damn.

Pigeon explosion at Piper Spit!

Pure magic: gifs from Piper Spit

I love making gifs, in full knowledge that they don't always  run so well. They can be slow or jerky for the first thirty seconds or so when you open a post, but normally they resolve - or at least, they do for me. For you, they may not be jerky at all, I hope.

Lately I've been able to make some really beautiful ones from our Burnaby Lake visits. I've found a new program - Imgur  - well, until IT stops working too, as they all do. Imgur works well and makes some huge gifs, but is very very slow and it's hard to save them. I'm not sure why that is. I use another one called Giphy that takes about thirteen seconds to make a beautiful gif, but it can only be from a short video, and a maximum of ten seconds long. Imgur is more like fifteen. But then, that's not important - is it? All that matters is getting them up here, a few seconds of magic time seen over and over again.

Some people say they hate gifs, and I do too, the two-second ones that are supposed to be funny. They are awful. People with the right equipment can make one-minute ones, but why don't I see them anywhere?

That gorgeous alpha male red-winged blackbird just swooped down on me unbidden, but after he finally left, THIS gorgeous creature came along. Looking it up, I found out it was a female red-winged blackbird, explaining her boldness. It's hard to describe her beauty, as her feathers were shot through with gold. 

Now here's a nice little sequence! Though if you watch carefully, the male actually waited until the female flew away. Or so it appears - unless she saw him coming - but that's not likely, because he flew up behind her. May I say once more - I have NEVER fed wild birds, and don't believe in feeding wildlife, but in my old age I have become weak, and there is a dire shortage of magic in my life now that my backyard birds have fled. An excuse, no doubt.

These sandhill cranes are mystical creatures, and they love to hang around the docks, hoping to be fed like all these birds. We usually see a mated pair, but this looks to be a smaller bachelor male (note the red mask). I just keep waiting for the pair to return with a fuzzy crane chick. If that happens, oh God, the gifs, the GIFS!!

POST-IT NOTE: Sometimes I think the gifs have to go through one entire (in this case, 15-second) cycle to run properly. But how do I know? All I know is that they DO run properly eventually, but if they're slow and jerky it takes forever to run through that first cycle.  Just keep watching, they'll move. These are some of the nicest gifs I've ever made. Just little packages of magic.

Blackbird, fly: magic on Burnaby Lake

I was astounded when this guy flew right down to me. Obviously he has no fear, which is not the best thing for him. But it's the best thing for me. He is magnificent and he knows it!

Stand on guard: Canada geese at Piper Spit

Bill managed to get a few shots of these newly-hatched goslings at Burnaby Lake yesterday. These are little fluffballs, still with their golden coat on.

If you get too close to the babies, there is a certain sequence of events. Unlike ducks, where only the female hangs around, geese guard their young in pairs. The sentry duck raises its head and stiffens its neck, then begins to nod its head up and down vigorously, then lowers its head and kinks its neck. The next step, you don't want to see - it charges at the enemy full-on. Swans have been known to kill people, so I don't think a riled Canada goose can be far behind.

Newly-hatched mallard chicks seem to go into the water immediately, but you usually see these little guys on the ground. That might explain their parents' zealous guarding behaviour. Either that, or they're just being Canada geese ("we stand on guard" - oh no - that's the second time I've said that).

We didn't get a shot of this, but there was a mother duck with thirteen newly-hatched ducklings swimming around in the warm, shallow waters of Piper Spit. This is a place we "discovered" maybe ten years ago, then it was blocked off for construction and we almost forgot about it. But every few years I'd ask Bill, "Remember that place - where was it? It had a great big boardwalk with a round thing at the end, and there were ducks just swarming all around it." "I dunno." Then I'd shove it back into the dreamscape that makes up 85% of my mind.

Then we got lost recently, and ended up at. .  . 

"This is Burnaby Lake," Bill said. "Remember? We came here once."

Oh Lord. Here it was, the big boardwalk with the round thing (a circular dock) at the end, the hordes of wildlife, songbirds, ducks, geese. . . shallow warm water and people feeding the birds, which is not a good idea, but which draws them magnetically.

We had found it, by God, or re-found it. I had not imagined it. Looking up information on it, we discovered were on the Piper Spit boardwalk. There was a colony of birdhouses nearby, and tons of red-winged blackbirds, which might be making families in there. These are nearly tame enough to eat out of your hand.

Best of all is the birdsong, the wildlife sounds which calm my brain. Urban life is noisy, and the noise is ugly. It jars. This heals, and restores. 

What does it mean when Paradise Lost is found again? 

Mystery duck

The duck mystery deepens. For years now, Bill and I have been walking around Como Lake in Coquitlam - a very pleasant alternative to the "duck park" that has been bulldozed to make way for a Third Reich-scale cement amphitheatre that will blast loud rock music night and day. Obviously, all the wildlife within a 5-mile radius has fled. 

But we still have Como Lake! We noticed some time ago that there are some pretty strange ducks amongst the mallards and wood ducks. This one, for example. This is a very big duck, almost the size of a goose, and he is brown-and-white  (several different shades of brown, from quite dark, almost coffee bean, to cocoa brown). Then we discovered, to our delight, a second brown-and-white duck, somewhat smaller than this one, likely a female. And yet, strangely enough, we've never seen them together.

I made this gif from an eight-second-long YouTube video labelled "Ducks at Como Lake". I know it's the same duck. Not my video, of course. There was no information with it, not even a description. This is not much help.

Do you think I can find ANYTHING on this duck, or on any duck remotely close to it? If I google "brown-and-white duck", I get professional photos that are labelled "brown-and-white duck". They appear to be of barnyard animals, but I can't be sure because there is no information with them at all.

NOBODY knows anything about these two ducks (or are there more? Or will there be babies?), which both intrigues me and drives me crazy. It's possible these are domestic ducks that have gone native, or whatever-it-is they do when they answer the call of the wild. Or maybe they're hybrids - it's just crazy enough. 

There were beavers living in LaFarge Lake (in the famous "duck park" which has now been paved, like Paradise in the Joni Mitchell song), and no one could explain that either. Nine beavers, to be exact, two adults and seven kits. Seems like some fever dream, except that there were nineteen trees felled or seriously gnawed in the park - we've seen some of them - and many still have wire mesh wrapped around the trunks. Beavers in a lake is no big deal, right? How about beavers living in a STONE QUARRY in the middle of a major city, in the residential area right next to a community college?

To make it even stranger, we saw an otter in the lake one day which scared the bejeezus out of the ducks. We've never seen them do this before, but they all, to a duck, beat it out of the water and just huddled in a line along the shore until the otter was well away from them. It swam around on its back like they all do. No way can there be ONE otter in a lake. Or a stone quarry.

Today we went to a place in Burnaby called Piper Spit and saw ducks and ducks and ducks: a mother duck with THIRTEEN babies, so newly-hatched their fluff was wet even when they were sitting on the ground. And we saw a pair of Canada geese with goslings so new they still had that pollen-y-looking yellow stuff on them, almost like vernix on a newborn.

One of the geese kept kinking its neck and bobbing its head at us. We knew why, of course. We were too close to its young. So I said to Bill: Do you know how you can tell it's a Canada goose?

Because it stands on guard? (Moan. It's too late at night.)

Special bonus news item from the Tri-City News!!

They may be one of Canada’s most iconic animals, but the beaver is not welcome in a popular park in Coquitlam.

City officials are once again dealing with the large rodents at Lafarge Lake after the animals appeared in late fall.

While the city isn’t sure how many beavers are in the park, Lanny Englund, the city’s urban forestry and parks services manager, noted a process is underway to have them removed and relocated.

The problem with the beavers is they damage trees and dig tunnels, which can undermine the trails around the lake and cause a hazard.

“It does seem to happen on and off and eventually it gets to the point where the impact is too great,” Englund told the Tri-Cities NOW, noting the city experienced a similar situation with beavers a couple of years ago.

“Town Centre Park is such a high use [park],” he said.

“There’s too much risk allowing them to do their thing.”

In the short term, the city has wrapped trees close to the lake in a fencing wire to protect them from the animals.

The city has also brought in a contractor to live-trap the beavers and relocate them to another part of the province.

It’s unclear how long it will take to trap and remove the animals from the lake.

Meanwhile, the big mystery is exactly how the beavers made the lake their home in the first place.

Englund noted the lake is connected to Hoy Creek and the Coquitlam River by underground pipes, but suggested it would difficult for the beavers to travel through them.

There is also a small creek in the northwest corner of Town Centre Park that has been home to beavers, but it would force the animals to cross over land.

Englund said an even more unlikely scenario is that someone intentionally put the beavers in the lake.
     

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Gangsta geese in the 'hood

Canada geese form ‘gang broods’ in Burnaby

Two adult birds with 33 goslings grab attention at Burnaby Lake

BY LARRY PYNN, VANCOUVER SUN MAY 22, 2015

A family of Canada Geese with 33 goslings at Burnaby Lake May 21 2015.

METRO VANCOUVER -- A new gang has claimed Burnaby Lake as its ‘hood.

Although a pair of Canada geese normally give birth to five or six young, Burnaby streamkeeper John Preissl documented two adults with no fewer than 33 goslings in tow. “As I walked down the trail near Piper Spit Pier, I noticed the large brood ... following the pair,” he explained Friday. “About 45 minutes later they swam right by me and across the lake to spend the night. It was good to see most of the rowers stopped for the family.”

The explanation is that Canada geese often form “gang broods” — defined as two or more broods amalgamated into a single cohesive unit and shepherded by four or more parents — according a 2009 study in the journal, Condor.

Gang brooding is more typical among older, experienced geese, and among geese that change mates from the previous year, the study found.

Gang broods, or crèches, can reportedly range to 100 goslings following just a few adults and are more common in areas of high nest density, in urban and suburban areas.

Rob Butler, a retired bird scientist with the Canadian Wildlife Service, said he spotted the same gang brood at Burnaby Lake. While he’s heard and read about such large numbers, this is the first time he’s actually seen it. “I said, ‘Holy smokes, look at that pair, they have a lot of young.’ ”

Butler said gang broods may be a case of safety in numbers — more eyes to watch for predators such as bald eagles, and reduced odds of being targeted should they attack.

“It’s mutual protection, lots of eyes and adults around,” he said.

It’s not clear why Preissl photographed just one pair of adults with the 33 goslings, but it’s possible the other parents are nearby, are dead, or are younger adults with less experience at raising young. “Anything’s possible,” Butler said. “At Burnaby Lake, they all get together to mooch food off people. They get all these broods together. It’s pretty easy to band together into one big group.”

lpynn@vancouversun.com

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

PLEASE NOTE: there's a really cool short video with this that I couldn't embed. Here's a link to the whole story.

http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Canada+geese+form+gang+broods+Burnaby/11075978/story.html

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Geese What? Goslings Galore!

Three broods of goslings at Sasamat Lake. Taken last year. This was all I could find in video to illustrate the "Canada geese form 'gang broods'" story from today's Vancouver Sun. It's our own shaky home video. I believe we counted eighteen geese altogether, but the spectacular mega-brood in Burnaby Lake totalled 33 goslings swimming in one long line. We watch wildlife in Como, Lafarge and Burnaby lakes all the time, but we've never seen anything like this!

Drama in the back yard

Such drama in the back yard! Ever since I lost Jasper, my beloved lovebird, I've had a sort of bird-shaped hole in my life. I thought longingly of a bird feeder, but our house is constructed in such a way that it does not allow hanging anything that we can see.

One day I was in the garage and saw an old  Ikea lamp and thought: that's it! With some remodelling, it would work as a stand that could hold some sort of container that would drain water (so it wouldn't be flooded with Vancouver rainwater). I didn't think birds would object to wet seeds. After much experimentation and remodelling, we had a sort of jerry-rigged feeder in our back yard and were enjoying the visits of juncos and chickadees.

One day I heard a dreadful screech and saw a large prehistoric-looking winged creature darting and swooping overhead. After looking it up on the Cornell Ornithology site, I recognized the Steller's jay. I noticed at that point having to refill the food supply practically every day, then finally saw His
Birdness up there - such a magnificent creature, handsome, arrogant, a little wicked. But I still couldn't believe he was cleaning out the feeder so often. Then I looked outside one day and A SQUIRREL was climbing the pole of the lamp, shimmying up like some sort of demented pole-dancer. The squirrels had breached the unbreachable feeder. I sprayed the pole with Pam, and now they just endlessly climb in one spot, thinking they're making progress. Squirrels are resourceful but not too bright.

As a little kid, I snuffled out signs of nature wherever I could. Where I lived was decidedly urban, but things were different then, without the incessant din that seems to be part of modern life: the endless construction, the dust and smoke, the earsplitting racket that never stops. Right now as I sit here writing, there is a constant, steady drone of something like a very loud vacuum cleaner. (WHAT IS IT???). No one else ever mentions the noise, because like the frogs in boiling water, they have become so acclimatized to it that it no longer registers on them - or else they are now half-deaf.

The milk was delivered by horse and wagon. Cloppa, cloppa, cloppa. (This ended up in my first novel, Better than Life.) People find it hard to believe, but it was true. My friend and I walked to Tecumseh Park on our own when we were maybe eight or nine. While social critics railed on and on about the blinding pace of progress and how it was killing human beings, not to mention the gross and alarming "population explosion" that no one ever refers to any more, Chatham, Ontario plodded on. Now I see it as a magical place, with a flowering cherry tree in the back yard that I could climb to get into the neighbor's yard to look at their pigeon coop. This was lifted whole for Mallory, my second novel.

Birds were a favorite fascination. We never had a bird feeder, though there were plenty of places we could have put one. In the depths of winter, my mother would ask the butcher for suet - really, just the fat trimmings from steaks and chops - and throw it out onto the snow. She never watched to see if the birds got it, or if it was gulped down by some roaming dog. (Coyotes, raccoons and bears were never a problem then, as we had not yet stolen all their land and backed them against the wall, where they would be demonized for encroaching on OUR territory and causing us trouble.)

I wondered about the suet. The reason she gave was "in the winter, the birds need a lot of fat to help them keep warm." This didn't make sense until a long time later.

I would adopt baby birds that fell from the nest quite frequently, fully believing I was rescuing them. I had no idea then that many species of bird PUSH their fledgelings out of the nest before they are able to fly properly,  then swoop down on on them to feed them until they are ready to take off on their own. A strange system, given the ubiquitous cats that just roamed everywhere then (for to keep a cat inside, let alone spay or neuter it, was unthinkably cruel).

But I took them in anyway, enchanted. Most of them died, of course, because I really had no idea what to feed them. One pigeon made it, in fact he burst out of the box and started flying all over the porch where I had to keep these things. But he was close to flight anyway and only sickened by the pollution in the Thames River. (Some things never change.)

I was also quite taken with squirrels, and noted that another neighbor had tamed a baby squirrel which clung to his arm. I WOULD have a squirrel for myself. Since I was bullheaded, a requisite for living in an environment which was almost wholly devoid of love, I kept on the watch for one. Then I saw a grey baby on the cherry tree, with that stunned, frozen look squirrels have when panicked (have you ever seen one run back in front of a car when crossing the street?). I put my hand out, not just to touch him but to grab him, and got my reward. Had to get a tetanus shot. Heard that bitter, even savage squirrel chattering for some time after that, probably the parents swearing at me, and rightly so.

The other day, having thrown a handful of grapes out in the back yard (and yes, I know I'm not supposed to feed wildlife) I noticed a black squirrel sitting up spinning the grape around in its paws, eating and spitting flying pieces out, probably the skin. I decided to see how close I could get. Normally they scram when I open the back door. It was amazing - I came closer and closer, and he just stood there. I was close enough to touch him, but didn't - I had already broken several rules of back-yardness already, and could just hear the scolding I'd get from all those militant naturalists.

Of course he ran away after a few seconds. I wondered what happened. Frozen in panic? Greedy for more grapes? (He had lots already.) I wondered if this was my pole-dancing squirrel, or if all of them had tried it. I do notice the older squirrels look very scarred and beat-up, while this year's babies are still fluffy and sleek. The one grey squirrel who often visits has an impossibly fat, silver-grey tail that makes you want to believe in fur coats again. He flaps it around in that adorable, yet alarming way that squirrels have. Probably a warning to keep off.

This has awakened the little girl in me. Finding things on YouTube that I haven't heard in decades is a strange feeling. I'm reaching out for something. I will probably attain another lovebird, have put my name in with a breeder, but one never knows about bird temperament. I love my Steller's jay, the way he darts his head around, posturing like a proud show dog, and raises his pointed black crest. Well, we haven't destroyed everything quite yet. But I am secretly glad I will not be here in 50 years, or even 20.

I have been trying to recreate an album called Pastorales, long out of print, and  have found a few favorite tracks. This piece reminds me of the innocence and enchantment of my childhood "nature days".

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