Some More Pictures

First off, a celebration. This is officially the 30th post to this blog. That means it has survived longer than Andrew's last attempt at keeping a blog (http://andrewswanderings.blogspot.com/).

Next, a couple of fun pictures from last Friday. I spent the day reading/walking/photographing in Ferndale while Rachel taught as we were on our way south that day to visit my brother Daniel for his birthday.

A Great Blue Heron at Tennet Lake

Hovander Homestead Park: Rachel likes the domestic ducks they keep.

A Ferndale cityscape

As you might have figured from the close up of the heron, I have gotten a little better using the spotting scope as a camera lens. Here are some photos from explorations around White Rock yesterday and today.

A winter plumage male Ruddy Duck

Greater Yellowlegs

Green Winged Teal. Tiny -but handsome- dabblers!

A couple of "Mallard Lovers"

Northern Pintail

And finally, a handsome juvenile Bald Eagle hunting a small diving duck (apologies to Rachel, but indeed the key food source for overwintering Bald eagles is ducks and gulls along the coast. They appeared along the coast in droves right after the Salmon Carcasses washed out of the rivers during flooding events at the beginning of January.

Crossing the Border

So, I am frequently met with astonishment when I say I commute into another country to work. Actually, it's not that bad. For one thing, we are a ten minutes' drive, and about a fifteen minutes' bike ride, from the border. It's like commuting into New Mexico when you live in Trinidad. For another, I have a Nexus pass, which cost $50 and about 3 or 4 hours total, and is worth every minute and every penny. Basically, it allows me to go into the special Nexus line and bypass the normal line. After waiting an average of 2 1/2 hours a day to get into America when I was doing all my Washington licensure paperwork, I did not begrudge any effort or money I had put into the Nexus pass. Now, in general, I don't have to wait longer than your average stoplight to get into one country or the other. Occasionally, the guards ask more questions, or there is more traffic, and if I'm really unlucky (which I have been only once so far) I get picked for a random thorough search, including parking my car and reporting inside to the immigration office while they check my car. But those are the rare days. Usually, I just swipe my card, say hi to the border guard, tell him/her once again the reason I have Colorado license plates (9 times out of 10, they ask; I feel like just having a bumper sticker saying, "Yes, I have Colorado plates. I'm from Colorado. My husband is a student at UBC, and I work in north Whatcom County." As it is, I just say this all the time), and go on through.

It's been interesting, though, doing this every day, and getting to know the different guards and seeing the differences between the Canadians and the Americans. Canadians in general are a lot nicer, and ask a lot fewer questions. However, they tend to be much more suspicious of why I'm in Canada and several times have asked me to show my passport and visas. Americans don't care about this so much (and a Nexus card works as a passport on the American side of the border). But they tend to be a lot more police-like in asking questions. I've found there are pretty much four different questioning styles (Andrew is sure they are all part of psychological mind games, and he's probably right). Sometimes, you just get waved on through without any questions. Sometimes, the guards are really intimidating and seem to start with the assumption that you're doing something illegal and they're going to find out what it is by whatever means possible. Sometimes (and this is probably the creepiest one), they treat you very much the same way you would treat a child you saw stealing something; they ask in a super-casual tone, "So, where are you going today?" or "Why do you have Colorado license plates?" but with underlying accusation, as if they're really saying, "You can either tell me the truth now, or I can tell you the truth and put you in jail for longer." Or, sometimes, they just have a friendly conversation with you, as if they're really truly interested in what you're doing in America and why you have Colorado license plates. I've gone through the border so many times now that it's just as normal to me as, say, stopping at the guard house in Carol's neighborhood. The guards can be scary, and they ask a lot of questions, but really all you have to do is tell them the truth.

The best border guard moment, however, occurred a few weeks ago, when I was driving to work. It was a new guy I'd never seen before, and he stopped and asked me (the usual first question), "Where's home for you?"

"White Rock," I answered.

His eyes narrowed, and he said, "But that's in Canada."

He sounded very antagonistic, like he was trying to draw attention to the discrepancies between my citizenship and my "home." So, as calmly and non-confrontationally as I could, I responded, "Yes. My husband is a student at UBC, and I--"

He cut me off. "But there are Canadians there!"

It's impossible to describe his tone without saying it myself. But for those of you who know Rebecca, imagine her saying, "What? Walk Chloe? But she's a dog!" It was at this moment I realized he was not at all serious, and so I said, "Yes, there are," and smiled and moved on.

Not very professional, probably, but absolutely hilarious. Definitely one of my more random border moments. It definitely kept me laughing all day.

Sqare Foot Garden

I got inspired yesterday. I was thinking about a garden for our deck and started reading about square foot gardening. I decided to give it a try. I went down on the beach to find my materials, and was much more successful than I had anticipated. I located enough edge boards for two or three plots. I loaded these and a bunch of driftwood onto my backpack -with about 120 lbs of 10 ft lengths of wood I must have been quite a sight walking down the beach- and hauled them home. I first constructed the trellis. Next I put together the walls of the bed and assembled them on a piece of 3/8" plywood to size for the base. This I raised with a few stray pieces of driftwood.


I filled the bed with a mixture of different soils I purchased (the expensive part of the project). I added 90 L of a mix of equal parts loam, manure, and peat moss, 30 L of peat moss, 30 L of sheep manure, and 50 L of "potting soil." I would have made up "Mel's Mix" but could not find vermiculite. I figured I would get adequate mineral components in the potting soil and loam portion of the tri-mix.


After loading the soil into the planter and mixing it together, I added the dividers to make it formally a square foot garden." Now to plant and see how things actually grow.



In the end I spent about $35 CAD on the soil and plywood, and less than eight hours of my time and ended up with this beautiful set up.



I am hoping to add a net to the portion of the trellis that won't block the view from inside.

Just in case you are curious, the pictures are all taken with the camera pointing roughly due west.

Chickadee meter over the top!

So, today we went to Campbell Valley Regional Park, legendary throughout the bird-savvy folk of White Rock for the place you can handfeed chickadees. My chickadee meter has been running pretty low lately, seeing as how I haven't gotten any birds but sparrows at my feeders. So we set out this morning with birdseed and warm clothes and a camera.


After a somewhat drawn-out excursion, we found the right place, where all the chickadees gather, and set to work. It would probably be an understatement to say that the chickadees didn't need much persuading. As soon as you stood near their bushes, and held out your hand, they would come chirping out, fluttering around you and seeing what you had to offer. The black-caps were a little bit more hesitant, but the chestnut-backs would just rush onto your hand with hardly any caution at all.


After hand-feeding a few chickadees, I decided to give a nuthatch call into the woods and see if anyone answered. Within seconds, a beautiful, tiny little red-breasted female came creeping into my peripheral vision, seeing what was up. She landed on my hand and took a seed, and flew off to hide it in the trees. She continued this for probably an hour, and was so friendly that I could move my hand around, sit down, face a different direction, and talk to random people on the trail, and she would just keep coming back, grabbing a seed, and stashing it in the trees (occasionally, she would get hungry and eat one on the spot). She also became fiercely territorial, and spent much of her time chasing the poor little chickadees away. The black-caps were terrified of her, which was funny, because who is afraid of a nuthatch? But they wouldn't come near me. The chestnut-backs, on the other hand, learned pretty quickly that she wasn't quite as scary when her mouth was full of food, and would wait until she had flown away and then quickly grab a seed from me and leave. It was amazing! I kept doing the nuthatch call, and she would look up at me curiously with her little black eyes. She landed on my head once or twice, too, and crept up my jeans to get to my hand. We had a really special hour together, and I bonded pretty strongly with her, whether or not she bonded with me.




Then, Andrew was getting bored, so we moved on, and I left a little pile of seed for my nuthatch friend. Finally, freed from nuthatch tyranny, the chickadees were able to eat as much as they wanted, and they mobbed me for seed. I stopped a few more times, but mostly I just walked slowly up the trail, a crowd of chickadees following me and eating seed out of my hands (I was feeding out of both my hands by now). You know the scene in Sleeping Beauty where the princess starts singing and all the little woodland creatures come out and land on her and follow her? I have always wanted to be able to do that. It was amazing. Chickadees were everywhere, and they were constantly landing on my head, and I could hear their little wings whirring through the air as they buzzed around me.

So, my vote on Campbell Valley Park andhand feeding chickadees? Out of ten stars, I'd give it at least a hundred.

Spotting Scope

I have been experimenting with the spotting scope I got for Christmas. It is really tricky to get a decent picture (these came from about three hours of work) because a) the zoom is so extreme it is hard to find your subject, b) my tripod barley holds the weight of my camera and scope together, so their is a fair bit of shake, and c) the depth of field through the tripod is very small, so with fast shutter times to minimize blur and a ?wide? aperture to accompany those, the depth of field is very very small. (I can be focused on the tail but the head of a duck that is 20 m away from me). Well, here are the results so far:

Long tailed ducks diving:

Female bufflehead (almost in focus)

Go here for a full resolution image.

Sunsets

Monday's Sunset. It had been forcast to be miserable weather all day (33 degrees and raining), but the sun was out, the air was still, and you could feel spring drifting from the south (It snowed the next day). I was out on the pier to catch the sun setting through the middle of a squall in the Straight of Georgia.




I got lucky catching this wave a couple of weeks ago

Foggy White Rock 3

We finally had a bit of a break from the fog yesterday. It rolled back in right before sunset, creating this glorious light.