After a lot of reasearch, we walked down to English Bay to rent some bikes to cycle Stanley Park's Sea Wall. Even before we left English Bay, I saw my first Canada Geese in Canada!
We visited Stanley Park because it has lots of wildlife and is a big open natural space surrounded by the sea. We were hoping to see lots of birdlife there!
We decided to cycle around, so we could see more of the park. We hired our bikes from the English Bay Bike Rentals and set off! You have to cycle anti-clockwise around the seawall so that everyone is heading in the same direction and to avoid collisions!
The first place we came to was the Lost Lagoon, a large lake with lots of ducks, including these Mallards with Ducklings. The Lost Lagoon is also the base for the Stanley Park Ecology Society, with a small information centre with books, models and exhibits about the park and its wildlife. They also have a useful computer with access to information to help ID anything you've seen.
The next stop on our ride was the Totem Park.
The nine totem poles at Brockton Point are BC's most visited tourist attraction. The collection started at Lumberman's Arch in the 1920s, when the Park Board bought four totems from Vancouver Island's Alert Bay. More purchased totems came from Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands) and the BC central coast Rivers Inlet, to celebrate the 1936 Golden Jubilee. In the mid 1960s, the totem poles were moved to the attractive and accessible Brockton Point. The Skedans Mortuary Pole is a replica as the original was returned home to Haida Gwaii. In the late 1980s, the remaining totem poles were sent to various museums for preservation and the Park Board commissioned and loaned replacement totems. The ninth and most recent totem pole, carved by Robert Yelton of the Squamish Nation, was added to Brockton Point in 2009.
Then we continued to cycle round until we spotted a sign for Beaver Lake, so we locked up the bikes and headed under the bridge to the ravine path, winding through the Pacific Temperate Rain Forest to the lake.
In the ravine we saw;
Rufous Hummingbird - These were really cool, watching them zip around at high speed!
Spotted Towhee - We picked up the Spotted Towhee with the Merlin app, and then spotted it in the woods calling.
Then once we reached the lake we also saw;
Steller's Jay - We saw a pair of Steller's Jay on one of the bridges, they were flitting down from the tree to bridge and back again. They were an amazing colour, iridescent Blue shimmering in the sunlight
Wood Duck - Bobbing in between the Water Lilies with their juveniles, they were out of breeding season, so the males had lost their display plumage.
Green Frog - We saw three of these amphibians, and heard many more. The first was in the water, the next was in classic frog pose on a water lily and the final one was sat on a mossy log, and very easy to photograph!
Eight-spot Skimmer - These cool dragonflies we zipping about pond, with amazing blue spots on their wings
Douglas Squirrel - The Douglas Squirrel, we think the one we saw was a young one, feeds mainly on Douglas Fir trees, and can be found along the Canadian Coast and forests.
Other animals spotted included;
Red-winged Blackbird
Song Sparrow
Swainson's Thrush
Brown Creeper
Blue-eyed Darner
American Robin
We then returned to our bikes and continued the ride around, stopping for Hotdogs at Third Beach. Once we'd returned the bikes, I went for a swim at English Beach in the sea... surrounded by Glaucous-winged Gulls!
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