Where the Birds Are Not

Recently went for a walk around the Maplewood Flats Bird Sanctuary in North Vancouver, but all our fine-feathered friends must have been out taking advantage of Boxing Week Sales.

While there were a few basic birdhouses built to entice various species, there were other sorts of housing on view as well...

Wouldn't you love to have a waterside house on stilts to call your own?
In this area, a few decades ago, squatters took advantage of the uninhabited mudflats until the "authorities" moved in and burned them all out in the late 1960s.

Here at Maplewood, Vancouver artist  Ken Lum has since recreated a miniature version of some of the shacks that graced the mudflats. (Mud flats, as it were.)

I think this split-level would do me nicely.

Of course, if it was life-size the purchase price would be in the millions.

When you put it in black and white like that, it sort of turns one's concept of "affordable housing" on its head! 

(photo turned to B&W then flipped; the whole thing is a reflection in the pond).

Gives one much to reflect on...

and deeply ponder.