Birding, January 17, 2026: Eagle droppings and foggy shores

Where: Centennial Beach (Delta), Richmond Nature House (Richmond), Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake (Burnaby)
Weather: Fog and sun, 5-8°C

For the first time in five weeks, the schedule and weather cooperated and we went birding, woo.

Reifel has been closed for a few weeks due to some fairly significant flooding, so we opted to start at Centennial Beach, where things were not quite as expected.

Centennial Beach

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It was very foggy at Boundary Bay. It’s there, trust me!

Namely, there was very dense fog, so dense that we could barely see Boundary Bay at all.

Despite the fog, the area turned out to be chock-full of birds today, starting with a juvenile bald eagle chowing down on a snack in a tree right next to the parking lot. There were other eagles perched on various branches and nearby trees, as well. The kid eagle was regularly dropping bits of whatever ex-animal it was eating, which would be kind of a gross thing to land on you if you happened to be walking by underneath.

Golden-crowned Sparrows were in abundance, as were the somewhat more scarce but sexy Fox Sparrows.

The fog rolled back enough for us to see a short ways across the bay and we noticed a large gathering of waterfowl that did not look familiar. Checking later, we confirmed it was a gaggle of Brant Geese–the first time either of us have seen them locally. Neat! Too bad they were so far away.

Closer up were shorebirds, teals and plenty of gulls mixing, mingling and occasionally bathing.

The fog provided a nice spooky backdrop to the scenery and shots of broody herons and the like.

In all, we saw a lot more than II was expecting.

Richmond Nature House

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Anna’s Hummingbird, plotting against Nic.

Nic wanted to check out the Richmond Nature House, because you don’t have to find the birds, you just go to the feeders and the challenge is deciding which of the billion juncos to shoot. In addition to the juncos, there were squirrels fattening themselves on seed, along with towhees, finches and a Downy Woodpecker.

One of the hummingbird feeders, clothed in a knit sock to keep the nectar from freezing, saw business from a female Anna’s hummingbird. The hummingbird did not have socks.

Since you don’t need to go anywhere to get shots at the nature house, we got our supply in and headed out for Piper Spit, hoping it would not be foggy there as the light shifted into the golden hour.

Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake

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A Wood Duck couple basking in the golden glow of the late afternoon sun.

And it was not foggy! What it was, was busy. And there were bad people feeding the birds, because apparently nothing short of running around and poking them with a cattle prod will stop some people. And maybe not even that, who knows?

Likely due to the shifting depth of the lake, the dowitchers were much closer to the pier than usual, and seemed unperturbed by us pesky humans. A few were so close I had to pull back on the zoom, which happens approximately never.

The cormorants were not here this time, though, replaced by a lot of crows and gulls. The usual waterfowl were present, and the light presented both opportunities with shadow and reflection, as well as challenges with overexposure. But hey, it was actually sunny!

In all, a much better day of birding than I had expected. I’m probably good for fog for the rest of the year, though.

The Shots

Shot with a Canon EOS R7 with 18-150 mm kit lens and 100-400 mm telephoto.

Gallery soon™.

The Birds (and other critters)

Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:

  • American Robin
  • Anna’s Hummingbird
  • Black-capped Chickadee
  • Dark-eyed Junco
  • Downy Woodpecker
  • Fox Sparrow
  • Golden-crowned Sparrow
  • House Finch
  • Purple Finch
  • Red-bellied nuthatch
  • Red-winged Blackbird
  • Song Sparrow
  • Spotted Towhee

Waterfowl and shorebirds:

  • American Coot
  • American Wigeon
  • Brant Goose – lifer!
  • Canada Goose
  • Gadwall
  • Great Blue Heron
  • Greater Yellowlegs
  • Green-winged Teal
  • Killdeer (heard, not seen)
  • Lesser Scaup
  • Long-billed Dowitcher
  • Mallard
  • Northern Pintail
  • Wood Duck

Common:

  • American Crow
  • Assorted gulls

Raptors:

  • Bald Eagle

Non-birds:

  • Squirrels!

Run 1,001: Fresh cuts

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View from Cariboo Dam, pre-run: Mild and calm.

I skipped Monday’s run due to a cute little weather phenomenon known as an atmospheric river. As you may know, rivers are wet and full of water. The atmospheric version is very much the same. I could have opted to run in the downpour on the river trail and been relatively safe–there are fewer large trees to be upended there vs. the lake, but I still would have been utterly drenched within the first few minutes.

So today, under merely cloudy skies, I headed to the lake. With four days off, I decided to adopt a more mellow pace that ended up being kind of sluggish. I had no oomph. This was made clear when I clocked in at 6:04/km on the second km. It’s been a long time since I was that slow. I did pick up after than (my best was the final km at 5:42) and finished with 5:54/km–my slowest run in a good long time.

I didn’t experience any issues and actually slept well last night, but I had a headache in the morning (possibly related to dehydration, or lack of caffeine) and that could have affected my performance. I just felt like I was plodding. Because I was plodding.

Still, the run itself was otherwise fine. Despite the rain, there weren’t really any puddles until the sports fields. When I hit one that spanned the entire width, I reversed and started running back the way I came, but was close to the end, so wrapped up the run shortly after, anyway.

The most visible sign of the storm were all the freshly cut trees. A fair number looked like they had been deliberately cut, because the trees were dead//rotten/in danger of toppling, but a few had just plain toppled as well. The trail, despite being mostly puddle-free, is in pretty bad shape in areas where water is cutting in. Water vs. gravel trail = water wins!

In all, not one for the record books, but it was still good to get out.

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Still Creek, post-run. Has there ever been a more aptly-named body of water?

Stats:

Run 1,001
Average pace: 5:54/km
Training status: Maintaining
Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW)
Start: 11:43 a.m.
Distance: 5.03 km
Time: 29:29
Weather: Cloudy
Temp: 8°C
Humidity: 96%
Wind: light
BPM: 145
Weight: 169.1 pounds
Total distance to date: 6,835 km
Devices: Garmin Forerunner 265, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: Saucony Peregrine 15 (95/150/245)

Music: Shuffle mode

CT Scan 2: Contrast Dye Boogaloo

It was time for more fun involving the little mass in my chest that shouldn’t be there. Today, it was CT scan time! To recap, I’ve had the following done:

  • CT scan #1 (this is what led to the discovery of the mass, as the scan was actually for a kidney infection)
  • MRI
  • PET scan
  • Pulmonary Function Test (PFT)

I was not told I’d be getting a CT scan, though they feel almost old hat at this point. I just got a call to book one and two days later, I was on a table getting scanned yet again, this time at UBC Hospital.

Attending to me this time was a cute young technician with a very Australian accent. It was kind of adorable.

What was less adorable were his attempts to insert the IV. I needed the IV because they would be using contrast dye to enhance the imagery and also, briefly, enhance the sensation that my bladder was emptying itself when it’s just a big psyche as the dye works through your system.

Here’s how the IV hunt went:

  1. Crook of right elbow: failed.
  2. Left hand: failed.
  3. Right wrist: failed.
  4. Crook of right elbow, but slightly to the right of the first attempt: success!

A couple of the failed attempts stung a bit and the tech asked if it was painful and I confirmed it was, a little, but I remained calm, and promised I would give my veins a good talking to afterward. They tell you to drink water before to be hydrated, which helps. Next time I’m going to drink a 4 litre jug of water on the way in.

The fourth and successful try did not hurt, which seemed a good clue that it would work, and it did.

I had to hold my arms over my head, which was as awkward as always, and at one point–I think just after the dye went in–the IV started to hurt a bit again, but it only lasted a few moments.

The actual scan was quick and simple, as CT scans are.

I celebrated by having a Sausage and Egg McMuffin. Which I ate before going in, actually.

Also, good news: Despite the repeated jabbings, no bruising! Here is my gallery of cotton wads, done Polaroid style, because I’m all about chintzy nostalgia! Also, I don’t recommend clicking on the thumbnails, they are sufficient as is.

Now I wait for whatever is next, hooray.

Linux Mint is working on my new system, woo

Here’s what I did:

  • Wiped my USB stick
  • Re-installed Ventoy on it
  • Added an ISO for Linux mint 22.2 (along with a few others)
  • Booted from the USB stick
  • Ran the Mint installer
  • Unmounted the drives when prompted
  • Chose the “Something else” option and confirmed by running Disks that it had correctly chosen to use the 2 TB external Samsung SSD.
  • Installed and done!

It seems to be running fairly decently. I’ll tweak a bunch of stuff (I need to disable Secure Boot to get it to recognize refresh rates higher than 120 Hz, for starters) and see how it goes. Before installing Mint, I also had a look at Kubuntu for the first time and I liked what I saw, but I’ll stick to Mint for now and do more distro-hopping somewhere down the line.

(Also, this was posted from Linux Mint.)

Run 1,000: 1,000! (also: squirrels)

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View from Cariboo Dam, pre-run: Calm ‘n clammy.

Today marked an official milestone (kilometrestone?): My 1,000th recorded run. Woo! I’ve actually done more than a thousand runs, but I didn’t record the first bunch, though I’ve been pretty diligent for most of the time I’ve been running (starting in 2009).

Today’s run was pretty normal, the only thing of note were squirrels. On average, I don’t see squirrels on my runs at the lake, but today I saw four–and three different kinds. At one point, a black squirrel on the side of the trail saw me coming and scampered further into the brush, as they do. A few paces past it, another black squirrel did the exact same thing, as if this was some Disney animatronic nature show. It was both cute and weird.

Despite being 7C, it felt colder than Wednesday’s run. The air was clammy, and the sky was dark and broody. But it didn’t rain! Because I was reasonably confident I would not get soaked, I did a regular 5K, instead of a short loop, and got to see more remnants of the big storm from a few weeks ago. The trail along the sports fields was a puddletastrophe again, but I carefully picked my way through and managed to keep my feet dry. I could see where a few trees had fallen and been cleaned up at various points. The trail was also just plain sloughing away in several spots, surrounded by orange traffic cones and some temporary gravel fill.

As for me, I didn’t experience any issues, but I felt a bit slower, probably from the clamminess. My pace was pretty consistent throughout, though, without any big dips, and I finished strong. My average was 5:43/km, and my BPM was back down at 143.

Overall, a nice wrap to the week. Here’s to the next 1,000 runs!

My total distance of 6830 km, as represented on Google Maps:

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I have no idea why there is a heart on the Missouri/Illinois border.

And a more down-to-earth shot, post-run:

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Still Creek, post-run. The palette may say Quake, but it’s still pretty in its own way.

Stats:

Run 1,000
Average pace: 5:43/km
Training status: Productive
Location: Burnaby Lake (CW)
Start: 12:50 p.m.
Distance: 5.03 km
Time: 28:45
Weather: Cloudy
Temp: 7°C
Humidity: 90%
Wind: light
BPM: 143
Weight: 169.4 pounds
Total distance to date: 6,830 km
Devices: Garmin Forerunner 265, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: Saucony Peregrine 15 (90/146/236)

Music: I Robot, The Alan Parsons Project

Run 999: Beware the pooping heron

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Brunette River, pre-run: Cold and getting colder.

My goal today was to get out and back before the rain. I was 3/5ths successful, which is a bit like being slightly pregnant.

Fortunately, it was only a light drizzle and by the end of the run the wind had settled a bit.

Prior to that, I started out on the river trail, the temperature a brisk 4C, the weather app saying it felt like 1C. I almost regretted wearing shorts, especially when the wind picked up (I had one tucking incident, where I had to grab the brim of my cap and secure it to keep it from lifting off my head). I started stronger than expected with a 5:38/km pace, but sputtered for the next two as the cold sank in. I picked up and finished strong, closing with 5:35/km and an overall pace of 5:46/km, which is in line with Monday when you account for conditions.

Other than it being rather cool, I experienced no issues–even my shoelaces stayed tied!

The trail saw moderate traffic, with a mix of other joggers, walkers and people with dogs. I was a bit surprised, given the weather.

The rain started around the 3K mark, but as mentioned, it was light, so didn’t have much impact. The weather app is insisting it is sleet, but it felt like plain old drizzle to me.

As for the heron: I noticed someone looking up on the first km of the run, followed their gaze and spotted a heron standing on a branch over the river. They always look a bit goofy to me doing this, like seeing an ostrich in a tree. I found this mildly delightful and finished my run. As I was walking out from the river trail, a sudden volume of white stuff splatted on the trail directly ahead of me, maybe 10–15 feet away. I looked up. The heron had moved to a branch over the trail. If I had been a few seconds faster, that copious load of heron poop would have landed on me. I wonder if the heron got its timing off.

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The light isn’t great, but you get the idea.

In the end, the run was fine and the lack of being pooped on even better.

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The river, post-run. It’s raining, but lightly enough it’s hard to tell.

Stats:

Run 999
Average pace: 5:46/km
Training status: Productive
Location: Brunette River Trail
Start: 10:53 a.m.
Distance: 5.03 km
Time: 28:58
Weather: Clouds, light rain
Temp: 4°C
Humidity: 91%
Wind: light to moderate
BPM: 151
Weight: 169.1 pounds
Total distance to date: 6,825 km
Devices: Garmin Forerunner 265, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: Saucony Peregrine 15 (85/133/218)

Music: Shuffle mode

The curious case of the Linux Mint non-installation

On my new PC (I’ll have another post soon on what I’ve installed and choices I’ve made/avoided this time around), I have the following drives:

  • A 2 TB Samsung SSD (main drive)
  • A 1 TB WD drive (secondary)
  • A 2 TB Samsung external SSD (no specific purpose yet)
  • An 8 TB HDD (backup/camera photos)
  • A 4 TB NAS (backup, various files I want accessible from multiple devices)

I have Windows 11 Pro set up on the main drive and have been planning on setting up another dual boot system, using Linux Mint again, as I did on my older PC. Somewhat randomly, I chose to use the external SSD for Mint.

I booted from a live Mint USB stick and went through the installation. I let it choose to automatically configure the dual boot after verifying that it would install Mint to the external SSD.

Or so I thought.

The install took a very long time. I was patient, I let it do its thing. At the end, it prompted me to remove the install media (USB stick) and hit ENTER to restart. I did, expecting to see the GRUB menu where I would have 10 seconds (by default) to choose Mint, Windows or enter the BIOS.

Instead, I very briefly saw mention of hitting F2 to get into the BIOS, then it loaded into Windows. A survey of all drives showed none had Linux Mint on them. The USB stick, however, is asking to be formatted in Windows, which leads me to believe that Mint installed on the USB stick.

This would seem like a very silly thing to do, but it would explain the very long install time. Why would it install to the USB stick? I do not know.

What I am contemplating doing, though, is taking the 1 TB SATA SSD in my old PC–which has Mint installed–and putting it in the new one, then running Boot Repair to get the GRUB menu working properly. Maybe.

After several false starts (I haven’t documented earlier attempts), it almost feels like the new PC is trying to reject Linux–or at least Mint. Maybe I can try another distro again.

I will ponder.

My favourite Atari 2600 games

One of the few perks of being old is I got to see the video game business grow from basically nothing to the monster it is today. Sometimes it’s a bad monster, but I’m going to talk about the good one here.

As a kid, I remember seeing coin-operated Pong machines in places like restaurant waiting areas and being dazzled by the technology. Around 1976 my family got a home Pong machine, probably from Sears. It might have been this one, which looks the way I remember:

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By Evan-Amos – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link (from Wikipedia)

My brother managed to pull the paddles out and rewire them to be handheld. Neat! A few years later, I got my first Atari 2600, then still called the VCS. While I’ve had other consoles over the years (and decades) the 2600 was where I cut my video game teeth and I had more games for it than the other systems–partly because it was my first system, and partly because there were so many games made for it.

Most of the games were not great, because the 2600 hardware was pretty primitive, even by the standards of the time. But still, there were games I came back to again and again. Here’s my list, in no particular order (you may wonder why some notable titles, like Pitfall, are missing–it’s because I didn’t have them. I was a kid, I could only afford so many cartridges!)

All inks to Wikipedia.

  • Adventure (Atari). Yes, you’re a square with an arrow and the dragons look like ducks. But back in 1980 this was one of the few home video games to make you feel like you were in an actual world.
  • Superman (Atari). Flying around as Superman was engaging on its own. The rest of the game almost didn’t matter and if you squint, it’s kind of a variation on Adventure. Still, flying!
  • Asteroids (Atari). This was a pretty simple game in the arcade, so it translated well to the 2600. Better, it was in colour and contained a bunch of variations the arcade version lacked.
  • Demon Attack (Imagic). As a Space Invaders clone, this had one trick–some enemies could split in two. But it was the graphics that dazzled me here, which seemed amazing for the 2600.
  • Video Pinball (Atari). This was my first “cozy” game and I didn’t even know it. While it crudely approximated pinball, what I liked was getting into the zone and being able to rack up ludicrously high scores. If I needed to capture some Zen, I played Video Pinball.
  • Super Breakout (Atari). Surprisingly good sound design elevated this game, along with its variations.
  • Missile Command (Atari). Another arcade port that worked surprisingly well. It simplified things, but the joystick control was tight, and the sound was great.
  • Circus Atari (Atari). The key here was the paddle controller, which worked really well. Popping balloons was strangely addictive.
  • Stellar Track (Sears). A Sears exclusive, this was my first taste of strategy gaming–and I liked it!

I had about 30 cartridges or so, and a bunch of these were Activision games, so you may be wondering why none of them made the list. It’s mostly because they looked great, but actually didn’t have a hook that kept me coming back. Barnstorming and Freeway were fine, but I’d keep going back to Asteroids or Missile Command. But here’s a few runner-ups:

  • Canyon Bomber (Atari)
  • Chopper Command (Activision)
  • Fishing Derby (Activision)
  • Kaboom (Activision)
  • Space Invaders (Atari)

Run 998: Loose laces sink shoes

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View from Cariboo Dam, pre-run: Not as gloomy as this photo makes it look.

I was busy in the morning and almost pondered skipping today’s run, which would have been bad, because the weather was actually decent. Instead, I ran in the early afternoon and still went to the lake, as the sun is no longer setting at 1:48 p.m.

And it was pretty close to the same performance as Friday’s run on the river trail, except for a few notable details:

  • The lake is a somewhat more technical trail, so a similar performance here means I was actually performing better, woo.
  • My BPM was an average of only 140, maxing out at 151. This is unusually low, but not so low that it can simply be written off as a wrong reading. Still, it suggests something. Stronger heart? Better shape? Phase of moon?

The trail was not too busy and conditions were pretty decent–no big puddles or debris to dodge. In the last km I even passed another couple running ahead of me. I didn’t really want to, because they weren’t running that much faster, but I wanted to slow down even less. Once I was past, I felt an urge to be kind of macho and keep a strong pace up to widen the gap, which led to my best km. My overall pace was 5:44/km.

Also, my training status is now back to Productive. I am back onboard the Running Train.

My lower heart rate may have been helped at the 1K mark, where my right shoelace came untied. I tied it before the run. I tied it again at the 1K mark. I tied it at the end of the run. This is the most wanting-to-be-untied shoelace I have ever encountered. It’s getting a tiny bit annoying now, and I may have to look into alternate methods of securing the laces on these shoes.

Otherwise, a good start to the week.

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View from the dam, opposite direction. Spot the heron.

Stats:

Run 998
Average pace: 5:44/km
Training status: Productive
Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW, short loop)
Start: 1:15 p.m.
Distance: 5.03 km
Time: 28:50
Weather: Cloudy
Temp: 6°C
Humidity: 77-75%
Wind: light
BPM: 140 (!)
Weight: 168.5 pounds
Total distance to date: 6,820 km
Devices: Garmin Forerunner 265, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: Saucony Peregrine 15 (80/129/209)

Music: Songs in the Attic, Billy Joel

About that 2025 summary

I’ve decided to skip writing up a post about 2025. It was not a complete disaster, but it was not a good year–for me, or for the world. My bookends on the year both involved getting IVs and CT scans. You don’t do these things for fun. Or if you do, your conception of fun is very different from mine.

But I also kept running throughout the year (that is, jogging, not running away from things). And other good things happened.

I’ll skip the bad, skip the summary, and focus on the year ahead instead.

And of course, cats.

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