As I mentioned in my first post, it hasn’t been all that interesting a start to the New Year. This weekend we took advantage of some sunshine to try another local walk that Justine has never done, and that I hadn’t done in years. Iona Jetty is just north of the airport and sticks almost 5 km out into the ocean. Iona park also provides an interesting spot for seeing birds, and this trip we got lots of snow geese!
A look at our walk out to the end of the jetty
As we drove up to the parking lot at Iona Beach Park, it was already surprisingly busy. We had hoped that we were out early enough, but there were still quite a few people. It was absolutely jammed as we were leaving, so our timing wasn’t too bad, but a bit earlier would have been better. As we drove up, we were very happy to see a huge flock of snow geese on the water!
A flock of snow geese out on the water.
A closer view…
We parked the car and took a few shots of the snow geese. We watched for a little while before we got ourselves together and headed out for our walk. We ended up doing a little more than 8 1/2 km on the walk, which was nice in the bright sunny day.
About half way out along the jetty, there was a bald eagle sitting on some pilings.
It was a beautiful, sunny day, and the view north and back to the city were amazing!
Eventually we got out to the very end of the jetty. The views back to the city were amazing, and with the binoculars we could see off to “our” Galiano Island. Out to sea, we saw big flocks of Surf Scoters flying along.
Surf Scoters in flight.
A pano of the view back from the end of the jetty.
Looking back over the airport with Mount Baker in the distance, a eagle keep watch.
Bald eagle
There were not a lot of small songbirds on the jetty. Not a huge surprise really.
A plane taking off from YVR with Mount Baker in the background. There was a surprising amount of plane traffic, given the pandemic.
Once we got back to the Park, some of the snow geese had moved into a position where it was easy to get very close to them. They were not worried about people at all, and so I was able to get some interesting shots. There were a number of green-winged teals mixed in with the snow geese, another pretty little duck that we get here in the winter time.
As I mentioned, the park was getting really busy so we decided to head out. It had been a nice walk. As we were heading home, we made a quick stop and McDonald Beach, along the Fraser. Late last year, we had gone for a walk along the other side of the Fraser and had seen this park from across the river. We wanted to check it out. It was nice enough, and there was a flock of Golden-crowned sparrows foraging in the shrubs.
