Snow Geese in Richmond, again.

Update, November 5 2011:   Here's what they looked and sounded like on River Road in Richmond a few days ago (video by Russell Cannings).

Original post, November 2009: The plan was to drive to Terra Nova to look for Snow Geese. We didn't have to go that far; a large and growing flock was chowing down on the turf at Grauer Elementary School on Blundell Road.

Although these schoolyard invasions have been going on in an irregular fashion for a number of years, and many are annoyed because of what the birds to to the lawn, including what they leave behind, I still have to stop and marvel at them. Why here? Why do these birds, in such numbers (thousands), who spend the summer on Wrangel Island in eastern Siberia, on a given day decide to settle on a particular soccer field? Tomorrow it could be another field elsewhere in the city. They seem to favour the soggier ones, which make root-plucking easier, but how they pick and choose and arrive en masse is something of a mystery.

Unless you are accompanied by an ill-mannered off-leash dog, you can approach very closely-- if you don't mind risking dirty shoes. You can spot family groups, with white, vigilant adults and grey-feathered young of the year whose learned behaviour now includes foraging between chalked lines.

Why here, at 49 09 16.34, -123 10 25.78?

Now, apartment blocks, ornamental trees and mowed lawns are as much a part of their world as a wind-swept, treeless arctic island.

A way to leave.

Here is a deciduous shrub/tree that refuses to defoliate quietly. It is, I believe, a Cotinus, commonly known as smoke tree for its fluffy, spent panicles that resemble puffs of purple-grey smoke. The leaves are dark purple-green in summer, but now are bright red and patterned with depigmented(?) spots between leaf veins.

I think this one is Cotinus 'Grace,' which was created by hybridizing the Eurasian C. coggygria with the eastern North American C. obovatus.

Cotinus is a member of the Anacardiaceae. Other members include sumac, mango, cashew, and a bane of my existence, poison ivy (poison oak too).

A crow.

A stormy day. The big jets seem louder and slower, working against the wind. Gulls crab sideways, blow backward, then give up.

Over there, dark and defiant, branch-surfing among stubborn leaves, is a crow. It is probably enjoying itself.

Back for another year.

There is at least one Anna's Hummingbird at Paulik Park in Richmond. One or more overwintered there last year, despite the very harsh weather of December and January. This species has been spreading north from its historical southern range for many years, and is becoming a winter resident in many localities in BC.

They were absent from the park during the breeding season. It's odd to think of their return as a sign of winter, but that's what it is.

Southern spirit.

If you take a plant from one relatively extreme latitude, and fling it across the equator to the corresponding extreme, will it carry ancestral spring in its DNA,

and thus bloom in the autumn of its new home?

If so, that would seem a dirty trick.

In any case, South African native Schizostylis coccinea is blooming in Canada now.