June 1, last day in Vancouver

I woke up early and planned to go to the eagles' nest but noticed that the bus didn't start until 8 am. I changed my plans and headed along the sea wall towards Stanley Park to watch the herons. They didn't disappoint!

It started to rain so I went back to the hotel for breakfast and to check out, then went over to the eagles' nest:

This trip started out soggy but got better every day!

Eagles from May 31

A few more from today:

Eagle heaven

No words...

Oh, hai!

Yeah, it's been a looooong time! But I just flew out to Vancouver to do some birdwatching although after the first few hours I guess it's more like rainwatching with a bit of birding! Anyway, after watching 4.5 episodes of Criminal Minds on the flight, I took the train and a bus to my hotel, dumped off my luggage and went to Stanley Park. When I was here a few years ago there was a great blue heron colony and there were almost 200 nests so I was pretty excited about coming back. I had my big, heavy umbrella with me which didn't do my photography any favours. The first thing I noticed was the sound of all the herons, the second was the putrid stench! I tried taking some pics but they didn't turn out too well since I was using one hand.

So after I saw the herons I walked a little way along the sea wall and kept hearing this squeal. I saw 2 crows going after each other...except that's not what they were doing. They were dive bombing an eagle! This may be one of the Vanier Park eagles or it could be the one that I saw the last 2 times I was here, over by the swimming pool at Second Beach. I would never have seen it because of the umbrella so a big thank you to the crows for alerting me. Again, not the greatest because of the umbrella and all but eagles are eagles.

That's it for day 1. It's not even 6 pm and I'm ready for bed because my body thinks I'm still in the eastern time zone!