Fragments From Floyd

Rain or shine, Vancouver BC is a city of walkers. Out our hotel window we could see folks sitting on park benches along English Bay, no hat, no umbrella--in a heavy drizzle. Water must be like a second skin for these people. They think nothing of being wet. In an hour it can stop and start raining a dozen times, so you can't really wait for 'good' weather to leave the house. There is so much to see, the air feels so good, and places are made for those who walk, jog, bike, skate or swim. There are many dogs on leashes, or well-behaved at the water's edge. It seems a hard place for man or beast to stay inside for very long.

While we were in town, we had ample opportunity to enjoy the wetness as a low pressure cell hung over the Pacific. Only on Monday, our last day, did we see a patch of blue bigger than your hand against the sky. The winds blew, and the temperature didn't make it out of the 50s but for an hour all together. We could dress for that, or work our day around it, but dim light and blowing rain didn't bode well for the camera. Even at its light-gathering best, the shots I'd envisioned just weren't going to come to light. Literally.

On one of our umbrella-walks on Sunday--our second night at the Sylvia on the west side of downtown--as we approached Stanley Park, I heard what I assumed was a chorus of frogs. The raucous calls were coming from the trees. It had to be tree frogs. I'd never heard such a dense cluster of any other invisible creature calling back and forth in great numbers; and the wet weather seemed perfect for amphibians, didn't it? But wait. What were those manhole-cover-sized clumps of sticks in the branches--ten in this tree, half again as many in that one there? And I could see movement, but in the dismal light against the somber sky, it could have been anything. Anything but frogs. Birds. Had to be birds, and large ones at that.

I soon discovered that it was a Great Blue Heron rookery, not a block from the nearest highrise apartment buildings. I was determined to come back the next morning as the sun (it seemed remotely possible) rose over the straight line of the eastern horizon, its rays slanting back into the dark shadows. I would get my shot of a heron mother feeding her young that I imagined. By the time I was conjuring this outting for the next day, Ann had caught up with me. After one whiff of heron rookery, she announced she would be going gift shopping upwind while I stalked the birds.

There near the nesting trees on Monday morning, I got in a conversation with the tennis pro clearing the nearby tennis courts of the past night's rain. April was the time to be here, he said. No leaves, lots of eggs, then chicks, and you can watch the whole cycle. Now the canopy had filled in, and the juveniles were tall and lanky, and hard to tell from the parents. He told about a time some weeks back when a Bald Eagle had fallen from the sky like a rock, straight down into a heron nest. Just above the heads of the amazed onlookers on the courts, the huge bird had flown off clutching two heron chicks, while being mobbed by a half dozen crows. Now that would have been a photographic moment!

I brought just a few pictures back from that outting--just enough to remember this most unexpected opportunity to stand in the midst of 75 heron nests. Well, not in the midst, exactly. That would have been foolhardy. Even with the umbrella.

Here's a series of heron silhouettes that I'm thinking might look nice in a thin silver frame.