Tag Archives: Birding

A violet green swallow starts off my day

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In the morning, just after the sun was out and striking the top of the tall cedar trees horizontally from the north-east, I took a mug of hot coffee and stepped out on my backyard garden for a few moments of quiet time, watching my vegetables and planning out a to-do list for the day.

But when I lifted the blinds and opened the glass door to the back patio, I knew I had to take my camera. Backyard was full of birds. As the sun had started warming the air, the insect population comes to life, and along with it, the insect eating birds and spider. Also, as the seed eating finches were about, since many of the wild and not so wild flowers were dropping mature seeds on the ground or floating in the air. A flash of yellow streaked by and I notice gold finches flitting about – not so common a site in my backyard.

By the time I got a camera with a long lens on it, the gold finch was nowhere to be found. However, there were a few hummingbirds flying wildly about, often chasing each other and even zipping my me, where I could hear the whirring of their wings. These experts of aerial acrobatics have been a daily and near constant visitor to my backyard, not just for the flowers, including some fuchsia in pots kept specifically for these birds.

Fuchsia flowers
Hummingbird investigating a feeder

Clicking on these birds were not easy since they were so fidgety. But I had gotten a few pictures of it hovering under a feeder a few days ago. It reminded me of the slow motion video I got of an Anna’s hummingbird weathering out a gentle snow fall, which looked even more gentle in the slow motion video.

Hummingbird during snowfall

Back to the present, I had a northern flicker sitting on a wooden power line post on my neighbour’s property. This guy, apart from drumming on wood and bark to pry out grubs inside the wood, had taken to drumming on metallic objects. It was not looking fr food, but rather, advertising itself for a potential mate. Since drumming on metal produced a far louder and ominous noise racket, it hope t convince a potential partner, that this was a male that would be more than able to provide for the family and should be considered a good catch.

Meanwhile, above me, a violet green swallow sat on a wire and pruned itself leisurely. Looking at it from its underside, it is not easy to figure out what kind of a swallow it is, or why it is called violet green. However, the bird was constantly moving and twisting around, trying to clean out and rearrange its feathers, so I could spend time on on clicking it from different views. This bird has both violet on its rump and brilliant green on its back.

Violet Green Swallow above my garden

 

The swallow and hummingbirds were of course not the only visitors. I had the more reliable jackrabbit that was a near constant visitor to my backyard.

Then there were the constant whirring of bee population visiting the numerous yellow flowers of the Cucubrita family – that is pumpkin, various squash, gourd and cucumber.

Apart from the perennial chickadees, we also were having another bunch that had appeared of late – a few of the siskin family. I could see them sitting on a pine tree or even the roof of my garden shed. American robins kept watching out for early worms. House finches roamed by deck occasionally.

A collared dove sat on another part of the overhead wire, and watched me serenely while all this was going on.

Come to think of it, I had lost my bird watching group on account of covid vaccine. But thankfully, the birds had not abandoned me, In fact, they were coming home, right in my own backyard. Fancy that.

I finished my coffee, set the camera down on a chair, and opened the water to water the plants. Today I was going to sow late season seeds – turnips and beet, on a new bed that got a fresh layer of wood, twigs and mowed lawn grass and then a top layer of soil and compost. Some of the home made fertiliser came from powdered egg shells, while others came from worm compost castings and worm compost tea, as well as recycled organic matter.

Talking about worm composting, I lost my stock when I was in India for two years till 2019. Upon return back to Canada, I had to purchase a small batch for $20. That small batch, numbering abut a hundred or so two years ago, has now had a huge population explosion, expanding from my first bin to a second bin and numbering several thousand. These fast compost producing red wiggler worms are outnumbering themselves beyond my needs. So, should anyone wish to buy some of these wonder creatures at half price, let me know. I do not need the small cash, but giving it free often results in insincere people grabbing some and letting them go to waste.

Anyhow, time to head back indoor, watch the final soccer match between Italy and England for the Euro2020 cup, and then fish out my turnip and beet seeds, and perhaps a bit of the carrots too, and head back out again once the sun has passed its hottest daily phase and begun to lose some of its sting.

That was my todays story, of backyard visitors, mostly birds. Like I said – grow food, not lawns. You will be amazed how the life around you begins to change. It is good for the soul and for the health. Good for the pocket too. Growing your own food is like printing your own money. Think about that.

Farewell to my birding group

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I had been away from the local birdwatching group I used to hang out with. Firstly, the leader, a good friend, died suddenly. He was suffering from cancer, but somehow I did not know, and during the covid restrictions, going out together had been restricted. That Tom died suddenly, came as a big shock to me. I really liked the guy, and had dropped him off a time or two at his place when he did not bring his own big vehicle. He had been the leader for as long as I was with them, which is almost ten years. It felt as it the heart had gone out of the group.

Tom Bearss

Meanwhile, time went by under the gathering clouds of covid. I did not get the feel that the flu was dangerous enough for the world to stand on its head, and smelled a rat – but I had no idea how large this rodent was going to be.

Anyhow, getting together was now a chore with social distancing and restrictions to numbers and many other more or less outlandish requirements that had no basis to scientific facts far as I could see. Unfortunately, the public bought it hook like and sinker. Even the guy at the auto service centre where I went to tune up my car, told me if I did not believe in covid, I must not be watching the TV. Well, I did by then believed that the best way to rid yourself of covid was to throw the damned tv out of the window, after unplugging it first.

Life was not going to be the same again, I gathered. As it is, the bird population in North America was plummeting in a free fall. Many of the birds we saw would not be around for the next generation. Everything was going up in smoke, and not just from covid.

Local birding trips with the old gang came to an abrupt halt for now. I went birding alone, or with neutral friends. I managed to meet up a few of the old gang here and there, often pairing up in small groups that I would meet up by chance. I would on occasion go birding with my wife, who took the morning walks along the Boundary Bay dyke by the 72nd St, next to the Boundary Bay airport. We would sometimes come across new folks in the lonely dyke road, like a couple riding their horse. It used to be nice.

We did see the usual birds. A short eared owl sitting on a fence post would be a treat. This was one of the few owls found in these lands that hunted in the day. Although never too numerous and usually hard to find, the dyke was a good place to find one, especially in the winter and early in the morning. You might even chance upon an even more rare barn owl, at the fringe of its range up north hereabouts in British Columbia.

My time and interest incrementally shifted to the ongoing covid drama across the planet, as well as on the need to grow much of my food in my own backyard. These two, in my mind, were not unconnected. From a bird watcher, I was turning into a lockdown protester on the streets on Surrey and Vancouver, as well as a dogged home gardener with the message – Grow Food, Not Lawns.

I would occasionally meet up with some of the people from the old birding group, but without Tom and without a good crowd, it was not the same.

Thankfully, his Highness Bill gates had not yet declared that an unvaccinated person without a mask trying to take a picture of an equally unvaccinated and maskless wild bird would trigger and end of all existence. So I could still click at birds without fear of triggering a reversal of the big bang.

But the dark clouds of covid, getting darker by the day, much preoccupied me. I was slowly waking up to the conclusion that life as we knew it before covid, was never going to come back again. Also, protesting on the streets were symbolic but not producing much meaningful result. The vast majority of the population either wholly believed the propaganda, or were mortally afraid of losing their jobs, or influenced by peer pressure, and simply replaced their prophet by the TV. It came to me that when the chips are down, the only people that might survive, for a bit, might be those that can grow their own food.

Thus, I turned from a long term anti-glyphosate food security activist and  a lifelong birder, to a lockdown and c-vaccine protester, freedom fighter, to a more focussed backyard organic farmer.

Time went by, and I am fast forwarding to the present. I had lapsed in my annual membership payment for the birding group, mainly because I used to pay cash by hand earlier during meetings. But since physical meeting was more or less shelved and I was not seeing these guys, payment in person could not be made.

And then, just today, I got an email posted to their group email – in which I was still a recipient. It talked about birding trips in the next few days. That brought back memories.

My gardening was now stable and I could spare a few hours in the morning after watering my plants, to go birding and return back in the afternoon. So I sent a reply, explaining my situation, that I had not kept my membership valid was was wiling to pay up if there was a convenient way to do so, and that I did not want to wear a mask during birding and if that was OK.

The person in charge called back. I could pay online. Mask was unnecessary. But, I must be vaccinated.

That was a mega shocker. No vaccine had yet been approved by FDA. They were merely released under emergency and people could voluntarily take them if they liked, taking the risk that should they be harmed, they alone were to blame. I knew enough about the messenger RNA and DNA vaccines not to ever offer to take then voluntarily. I knew the reason behind the vaccines were goals other than safety of health. I had not taken any vaccine in sixty years and I had not gotten sick with any infective disease in that period. I was horrified that the group would even consider making  vaccination a mandatory requirement.

I told the person the same thing, and informed him that there was no way I was going to take a vaccine just to join this birding group. Birds will be there, and I will be there, without vaccine. That is all there is to it.

And thus, it was farewell to my birding group, drawing curtains over a long association. I wished Tom Bearss was still alive. But, what happened to me, is a small snapshot of what is happening around the world. Looting of public funds and destruction of liberty using the pretext of public safety.

Goodbye friends. Nice knowing you.