Thursday 17 March 2016

While on our recent walking tour to see the Vancouver cherry blossoms we stumbled across an amazing sight. In a densely populated residential area, with many older high-rise apartments, just on the edge of Stanley Park and right behind the Park administrative office building, we came across this sign.



Looking up, we saw one of North America’s largest urban colonies of Pacific Great Blue Herons. Herons have long been one of our favourite birds, so elegant and graceful, we really enjoy seeing them. Here, in this unlikely location, was a mass of maybe one hundred nests in just a few trees, all populated with these huge, magnificent birds and to our delight, with courtship behaviours and nest-building skills on display.



The birds were actively flying back and forth and landing very gently on the flimsy branches and then hopping over to the nest. The males apparently bring sticks to the female so she can build the nest.








It's early days yet. The birds are still courting and nest building. Eggs won't be laid until May followed by a twenty-eight day incubation. June is chick-rearing and July is fledging. About 175 birds fledged here in 2015.

Of course, we aren't the only ones to have noticed this colony and it's been attracting quite a bit of attention for the sixteen years it's been in existence. The fun part is that a webcam was installed last year and you can watch all the activity for yourself. Visit  http://www.vancouver.ca/heroncam. This site even allows you to control the camera and point it where you want!

Other birds in the area, like this woodpecker, were also interesting.



Some of you may have noticed that I now have a much improved zoom capability. None of the bird shots in this post would have been possible without it. I traded in my excellent, but only 3x zoom, Sony RXIII, for a Canon SX60 with 65x zoom. I'm still finding my way around the camera, but, am amazed with its capability.

This is a photo taken from our solarium. Note the top rightmost corner of the closest building.


Now look at the zoomed in image, no tripod used, with a reasonably clear photo of the eagle perched there. Wow I'm impressed!


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Finally, finally, after a dismal stretch of eighteen (who's counting?) days of rain, the sun came out and gifted us with a delightful day out among Vancouver's spectacular cherry blossoms.



There is an official Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival (http://www.vcbf.ca) which runs for a month from March 24. In Metro Vancouver, at least 45 varieties of ornamental cherry trees have been planted over the last few decades and there are at least 18,000 street trees. There are three key blooming seasons for cherry trees: early blooming (January to March), mid-blooming (March to April) and late blooming (April to May). The mid-blooming season contains some of the most spectacular cultivars, especially the Akebono, which are currently at their peak. We printed off the tour map from the website and headed out on foot for a lengthy tour.

Even the most urban spaces had spectacular displays. This is the taxi stand at the Burrard Street SkyTrain station in the middle of downtown.



The blooms make a barren, most ordinary street look special.



They even make an ordinary apartment building look interesting, for a little while anyway...



Groves of blossoms were everywhere.




We especially liked this example of urban landscaping with a backdrop of blooms. The engraving reads:
"In rivers, the water you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes: so with time present" - Leonardo da Vinci



Closer to home, our West Vancouver village of Dundarave has its own blossom show which we enjoy every day while walking to the gym and shops.


It wasn't just cherry blossoms either, many other blooms were on show. Spring seems to be here in earnest now. Hooray!

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Saturday 5 March 2016

We're just back from a short visit to Sun Peaks Resort, http://www.sunpeaksresort.com, near Kamloops, British Columbia. We left Vancouver on an unusually sunny, dry day and headed through the Coast mountains east to the interior. Kamloops, with its semi-arid climate was its usual brown and dry-looking self without a speck of snow to be seen anywhere. It looked like it hadn't snowed in weeks. We were wondering how there could possibly be enough snow to ski on at Sun Peaks. We took the road off the highway and started heading up into the high country. The countryside changed to prosperous-looking, wooded, horse farms and ranch lands, but, still no snow. Then, just before our arrival at the resort it all changed dramatically. There was snow and plenty of it! Rooftops were heavily laden with the white stuff.



Annual snowfall here is 6 metres (237") of powder and it showed. The conditions on the slopes were the best we've ever experienced anywhere and we've skied in quite a few locations. We were very impressed with this resort even though we were only able to sample just a few of the 120+ runs. There were no crowds, or, lift lines and more skiers than boarders. We only skied three days. The weather could have been better: the first day was heavy snow, the second was so foggy you could barely see your ski tips and on the third day it was clear sky lower down, but, still fogged in at the top. This location averages over 2,000 hours of sunshine a year, so, it was just our bad luck to be there during a bad patch. Although we never saw the top, the skiing was great nonetheless. On the day we were leaving it all cleared up and we were finally able to see the two Alpine bowls at the summit. Maybe next time...


There is a pretty ski-through pedestrian village and we enjoyed nice meals at some of the restaurants there.


The locals were very friendly, including this beautiful 'Newfie' (a Newfoundland dog, a unique Canadian breed)....



There was also drama with the arrival of a helicopter ambulance which quickly took away an injured skier. It wasn't a recreational skier injury, but, a speed skier, one of the competitors in the Speed Ski World Cup race happening while we were there.



Sun Peaks is the only speed skiing event held in North America and there were lots of Europeans that had come specifically to race here. We'd never heard of this event before and it was interesting to see the red-rubber suited competitors with aerodynamic helmets and leg padding. It's described as the 'fastest non-motorized sport on earth'. Skiers accelerate from 0 to 175 km/h in a mere 8 seconds! The record for this course is held by a Sun Peaks local skier, 178 km.

(Photo: Adam Stein)

Check out this video of the 2014 event.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af-XprZc5NY&feature=player_embedded



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