A bit of a photo dump from the week. There was a swap meet organized by some friends where I took a handful of bits from my parts bin, and managed to sell a couple of the bigger ticket items too! I made three (three!) trips to the Maplewood Flats bird sanctuary on the other side of the bridge – twice after work, where I didn’t find a lot going on, and then once on Saturday morning to try to catch a little more action – and while it was not exactly teeming with birds, I did see some good stuff (and got some decent photos)!
As can be seen above, the swap meet was well-attended. It was followed by a parkbagging ride a few kilometres south. I don’t share enough dog photos on the blog considering how much of my time is spent with them, so here’s a couple from one of the mornings. Around 8am every day we get out for a 30-40 minute walk followed by 20-30 minutes at the dog park. The walk portion is to ensure Leia gets enough activity, since she just stands around awkwardly at the park.
A month ago, August 15th to be exact, I bought a Bike Friday.. again. I sold the last one because I came to appreciate that I simply didn’t have space for it. It was a good bike and fit the bill well, but did have some quirks – like a really high BB and heavy duty tubing; it was clearly built for all-terrain touring and overkill for my needs. This one feels considerably lighter and the geometry is better suited to my purposes. I’m still not sure how it is going to fit into the quiver, but it folds quite small, so for now it’s just stowed away until I figure out what I’m doing with it. For now I put on a handlebar, grips, and saddle from the stash:
The girls again at Pandora, next to the dog park:
I noticed that a couple rare birds had been seen at Maplewood Flats, which is about an 8km ride from home, so I took the Twenty over to look around. Evenings aren’t a great time for birding really, and it was pretty quiet. I did get a photo of the elusive brown creeper though, below.
Two days later and I went back again to see if I’d have better luck. I didn’t, but it is a nice way to spend the evening while the daylight hours are still long enough. This time I took the Bombadil, stopping along Lynn river on the way home.
My third trip to Maplewood was Saturday morning aboard the Bombadil again. Feels a bit wrong to lock it up out-of-sight for a couple hours, but bird sanctuaries have got to be particularly safe places for such.
Here are some photos I managed. I’m shooting with an old entry-level DSLR, a Nikon D5100, with a cheap 70-300mm lens. It doesn’t produce stunning photos but it works. I am actively saving up for a more modern setup; the auto-focus of today’s cameras will make bird photography so much less frustrating!
A first for me (new lifer, as the birders say) was this red-breasted sapsucker: not a great photo but enough to positively ID the bird.
I watched this chestnut-backed chickadee for a while in this tree, constantly moving around. Very similar in appearance to the much more common and curious black-capped chickadee, these chestnut backed versions are a lot more shy and quiet, and tend to stick to coniferous forests around here.
This song sparrow was not at all concerned about my proximity, I walked within a few feet without it flying away, allowing me to get a close-up shot:
And my favourite part of the trip was watching a couple downy woodpeckers work this area of woods. They are quite small and very neat looking.
Leave a Reply