November 13 & 14/2013, Vancouver and Squamish

I made it back out to Vancouver between November 13 & 19/2013.  The trip was centred around the Fraser Valley Bald Eagle Festival in Harrison Mills, BC, but the first highlights began soon after I landed in Vancouver.  I went to Vanier Park and said hello to the male adult bald eagle who nests in the park.  His favourite hangout is the top of the totem pole.

The following morning, I woke up while it was still dark and grabbed my camera and tripod to try my hand at night photography.  These are ships out in English Bay.

From there I went up to Squamish which is about an hour northwest of Vancouver and is one of the most beautiful drives anywhere.  I had to remind myself to watch the road and to breathe regularly.  No pictures of the drive, obviously, and I went there with no expectation of seeing eagles since I had heard there were none about three weeks ago.  However, I was pleasantly surprised.

There were approximately 20 eagles hanging around, some in trees, some on the sand feasting on fish carcasses. 

There were also some red-headed mergansers

 And a seal!

 

The above eagle decided to torment the gulls

All in all, one of the most amazing days of my life, the weather was perfect, the eagles were close and I didn't want to leave.  I told a friend that if it rained the rest of the time it wouldn't matter because I had this day.  Little did I know, it was just the start!

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!

ING Direct and the cost of gas

This one is too good to be true, but it definitely is legit! You all know ING Direct from the commercials with the guy with the accent who tells you to save your money and not to use other banks. Well right now, they have a referral program to people opening new accounts. If you are referred by another account holder and you open an account with them, when you deposit $100 before the end of August you each will get $50 deposited into your new account! I did it last Friday, filled out the form, sent off the cheque, today is Tuesday and they already cleared my cheque and put the $50 into my account. If you are interested, this is the link. It explains all of their different accounts and if you want to open an account and you need a referral, my Orange Key is 39626323S1 which you can enter near the bottom of the form. I originally was just going to open this as a savings account for emergencies but I compared the interest rate of my bank's TFSA to ING's and will be moving my TFSA over to them as well as they pay higher interest. It's not a huge amount but better in my account than theirs!

Also, for those of you who drive, there are a number of sites that tell you if the price at the pumps is going up or down the following day. I usually get updates on twitter via 680 news but they don't always post about gas prices. This site seems to be the most reliable and it's not just for the Toronto area, in fact, not even just for Canada. I like knowing whether I should fill up or top up the day before.

Hope everyone is surviving the never ending heatwave!