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.

Giving You The Bird

What can I say?  I like herons. And this one that I espied in the Halifax Public Gardens last October was heroically heronic.

I like it when they arch the neck in that classic s-curve,

or maybe it's more like a cedilla hanging off a French "c."

Here, that snaky neck is more elongated, 

but still pleasingly curvy...

stretching a little further, but still graceful, don't you think?

(reminds me of my old ballet teacher's admonitions to stretch our necks long)

The almost perpendicular pose is not without appeal.

Front on doesn't really capture a heron's best features,

but I thought the reflection made the picture interesting.

Oh, now he's got his feathers ruffled, in a huff due to the previous less-than-flattering photo.

Well! he's giving us the bum's rush
and mooning us at the same time!

Never mind, he only flew to the other side of the pond where I was able to get a few more, more flattering shots of him to feather my blog with.

I do hope, my fine feathered friends, that you will come flocking back to see them in a few days' time.

Winging something up

I had the great good fortune to get quite a few pictures of a splendid heron in the Halifax Public Gardens in October.

It was almost as if he was posing.

I caught him in many stances...in his heron trance...

and will share some more pictures of him here very soon.

Meanwhile, make like a heron

and please stand by...

City Birds

Went to my other favourite park in Vancouver yesterday, the big one known as Stanley.  Another glorious sunny day here.  As I was aiming to get a traditional picture of English Bay harbour, a crow flew into the frame.

I was actually very happy with this guest appearance as I can never catch them in flight when I try.

Although it can be annoying when someone wanders into the picture I'm trying to get, I really didn't mind this walk-on by Mr. Crow.

Not to be outdone,

a flock of Canada Geese honoured me with a sail past (safer than a fly-over from an observer's point of view, if you catch my drift).

And then to top it all off, while waiting for my bus home, I caught this gull doing a magic act!  See how he's making the paper bag hover in mid-air?!

(also caught a glimpse of this funny bird standing across the street from where I was. She looked oddly familiar somehow...)

Pigeon English

Seen in Montreal's Chinatown.

Here it is fast approaching Christmas and I have not been posting anything remotely seasonal here. 

Truth to tell, I haven't been out taking pictures for quite some time.  So I am digging through my archives of  photos and gift-wrapping them in new colours.

Quite often when I play with my pictures in Photoshop I'm not sure whether I should tuck them into my Décolleté here for you peek at, or over wing them up over on my art blog.

So I'm doing a cross-over.

Or maybe it's a form of  "re-gifting." 

To put it in pigeon English,

I hope you don't think I've gone coo-coo.

A Little Birdie Told Me

I heard it through the grapevine covering the chicken coup that it is  was World Bird Wednesday so I thought I would add these Toulouse Geese that I saw recently at the Public Gardens in Halifax.

A sign on the fence informed me that these geese are the sort that are preferred for producing paté de foie gras, which perhaps explains why they're looking rather disgruntled, and not a little apprehensive at being so attentively regarded.