Category Archives: Photography

Images from my Flickr photostream.

Thoughts falling like raindrops, in no especial order…

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It’s pouring, which does not bode well for a Mother’s Day outing with Barb. We may be jostling for elbow room at a brunch place tomorrow if the rain doesn’t let up.

In the meantime, I have finished Josh Lanyon’s The Dark Farewell, which–when I take over the universe and am boss of you all–shall be retitled: “Ha Ha Ha, Bored Now! The End, Suckers!” until such time as Lanyon can be made to sit down and finish the thing properly. Or at all. Just as things were starting to get messy he solved the crime, wiped out the Romantic Obstacle, and finis! I am moving on to Wayne Arthurson, and Fall from Grace, in what might be described as a Profound Reader Snit.

(Which state I do expect Wayne to remedy. I already love how he writes about the Alberta landscape.)

Words, words, words: 1748 words since last time on the current novel.

I am working on a bunch of related shorts, though, and have just had a grand realization about the next entry in that batch. So once I fix up the chapters I drafted this week, I may defect from the novel to the shorties, which I’m calling The Gales, for 8500 words or so. Meanwhile, here’s a snippet from that book; I Tweeted it earlier this week:

At his feet, the gutted remains of the monster were soaking into Sophie’s second-best jeans.

And a sea star. Well, two:
Sea Star

Stanley Park

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I’m still getting to know Stanley Park a bit better; saw my first duckling of the season yesterday on a walk around Lost Lagoon, and checked to see if there were any heron babies. The swans are nesting and the thing I find most remarkable about this is how incredibly huge the nests are. There were scaups galore (lesser, I think) and a billion red-winged blackbirds, too.

Off balance gull

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You don’t usually see birds being ungainly, but this gull’s having a clumsy moment: I was shooting it at English Bay last week. It was sitting all tucked and perfectly calm on the beach, but then a couple of women walked a little too close, catching it off guard, and so it tottered a few steps away.

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I hope that most of you got a long weekend, and that for everyone it was a good one.

Risked getting birdcrap in my hair for these…

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I swore I would make it out there with the big zoom, and now I have. In fact, I meant today to head straight for the Stanley Park Heronry, as it’s called, but the allure of a spin around the reservoir caught me. This means that at some point in the not too distant I’ll be uploading more swans, scaups, and gulls. But I made it in the end, and it was wondrous. Here’s my first sighting.

Each clump is a nest…

Stanley Park Heronry

Each nest has two birds… and probably four photographers.

Oh, there were some big-ass lenses and mighty tripods there, and a heck of a lot of people, all crammed into the four square feet with the best light and the least evidence, on the ground, of bird droppings. (Since I was willing to get slimed and not wed to a forty pound tripod, I circled a bit.)

Stanley Park Heronry

I observed that some of my feathered friends have strong feelings, possibly about our upcoming national and provincial elections. If you’re local, I recommend going to hear what they have to say. Herons are usually so quiet and dignified!

Stanley Park Heronry

Others, however, clearly have already decided how they’re voting and have turned off the TV until both elections and @$@###%! hockey season are over.

Stanley Park Heronry

My mission: get back when the chicks are hatched.