Our walk into Vancouver at lunch time was rewarded by cormorants and seals (harbour I presumed but I am not sure) in the estuary by the mariner.
Then we popped out to see Stanley park after a particularly fabulous bowl of ramen for dinner as we had heard that Beaver Lake at dusk was a good bet. The park was only a 10 minute walk from the hotel (it would have been 5 but I forgot my phone and needed it for Merlin!).
I will admit to being pretty unimpressed when we got to the first lake (lost lake) as it is almost entirely covered in pondweed. There were a few dragon flies and red eyed ducks, but not a lot else. It didn’t seem very healthy and was very overgrown with rushes at the edges so you couldn’t see in at all.
Without much expectation, we walked through into the forest and got a surprise – redwood trees! Lots that have been cut or fallen, but some younger ones are still standing. It almost looks as though someone thought it would be a good idea to plant them but they are not native and now they are being steadily removed again. We saw a grey squirrel straight away that posed beautifully for Keith. Another squirrel then started doing bird impressions and tricking me into trying to ID it with Merlin. It turned out to be a Douglas squirrel which are only found pretty locally to Vancouver. They live happily with grey and red as they have a slightly different diet.
As we walked through the woods and around Beaver Lake, Merlin found me some new birds that I hadn’t found before:
We sat down right in front of the beavers lodge and watched the ducks and dragonflies doing their thing. There was quite a bit of noise from the road, passing seaplanes and people on bikes but when they all went temporarily quiet, the bullfrogs started singing and it was so loud! It didn’t last more than a few minutes and we couldn’t spot any of them but it was very cool.
We kept still and quiet for about 20 minutes while people walked and cycled past, seaplanes whined overhead and the ducklings chirped to each other and then we were rewarded… I thought I had seen something moving the reeds about 100m from where we were sitting, then suddenly there was a big beaver swimming towards us from the reeds. It was very aware of us and twitched it’s backwards facing ears at Keith’s camera clicking. It turned around and nearly swam back to the reeds but then changed its mind and swam up to the front of its house and dove under the water, presumably to go inside. I was very pleased to have seen it!!
By this point the light was failing so we made a beeline back to the hotel and the resting teenagers.