There are humans in this photo

A photo of the International Space Station. Yesterday, it made in appearance above Vancouver for about 4 minutes, peaking almost directly overhead. Looking at it through a 300mm lens, it zooms from one end of my field of view to the other in about five seconds.  It occupies about 40 of the 97 pixels in width of my original photo.

Until someone lands on the moon, this will be the furthest a human being will ever be in one of my photos. At about 400 km away and 109 metres wide, taking this photo is like taking a photo of a football field in Portland, Oregon (if the earth's curvature weren't in the way).  Oh, and it's travelling through space at 27,000km/h, so it'd span the distance from Portland to here in about the time it took you to read this far (just under a minute).

There are a few reasons why manmade satellites like the ISS aren't always visible.  The shadow of the earth gets in the way except just before sunrise or after sunset. But also, many satellites aren't easily visible to the naked eye unless their solar panels are oriented in just the right way to reflect sunlight.  And of course in Vancouver, clear skies are often a challenge.

You'll have a chance to see it tomorrow (the 7th) night for about 6 minutes as well.
https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/sightings/view.cfm?country=Canada&region=British_Columbia&city=Vancouver#.XAn-z2hKiUk

We have a Canadian on board at the moment, Quebec-born David Saint-Jacques. Bonjour, monsieur.

The beaver moon

Terra Nova park has long been home to beavers.  The stumps of young sapling bordering the pond have been chiseled to an irregular point, providing the first evidence.  On one side of the pond is a lodge, obscured by cattails from most vantage points for privacy.  A 3 metre tree is now growing out of the lodge, suggesting that the beavers have been around quite a few years.

Lodge during the day

I've never seen the beavers during the day, and I was suspicious whether they were still around, as I hadn't noticed any fresh stumps around the pond (plus there was a tree growing out of the lodge...wouldn't the beavers at an active lodge be a bit more fastidious with their landscaping?).

So I wasn't realistically thinking I'd spot any beavers on Friday night, when I visited the park. It so happened that Thursday night marked the first full moon in November, known as the beaver moon because beavers are busily constructing their lodges in preparation for winter.  Surely, having completed their Beaver Moon work, they'd be sharing a few beers with their buddies down by the lodge, not sauntering about in the cool barely-above-freezing temperatures.

While it was indeed a fullish moon, clouds shrouded direct moonlight. Despite that, the clouds illuminated by a moon from above and the urban lights from below provided enough background to show silhouettes of silent owls drifting past.  It was when my eyes were skyward that I was startled by a splashing in the water, as loud as a large rock being thrown in.

 

Beaver splash, a big "plunk"

Beaver creating tracks in the floating Azollapalloza

One of it's nearer approaches

The beaver swam around in circles, splashing periodically to alert his family of this unwelcome guest.  He eyed me for probably 5 minutes before he tired of me and disappeared.

The view at night

Thought the sound behind me in the dark was a person, relieved to see this little guy

The beavers have been expanding their range over the last few years. The stumps by the pond were brown, suggesting they were years old, but as I trekked along the dyke, following the occasional sounds of splashing in the ditch next to the dyke, I came across some fresh stumps.

A diameter of about a 30 cm

This tree and about three others in the vicinity were about 5 meters away from the ditch, and seemed a lot fresher (see the woodchips on top of the fallen leaves).  The top of the tree had already been gnawed off, probably taken for the edible leaves.  Some of the trees near the ditch were partially damaged, but were now protected with chicken wire.  Looks like the parks maintenance people will have to move further inland.

Boundary Bay-supporting animals of the sky, and of the water.

The skies were as blue as could be today.  The warm sun invited us to to join it outside for just a few more days before a forecast of rain befalls us for the coming week.

First stop was Boundary Bay, looking for, you guessed it, owls.
We usually have good luck spotting them out there, or rather, spotting a crowd of photographers, who have done the impossibly difficult job of finding the owls.

They were looking at this.  See it yet?

Photographing with a smartphone through a pair of binoculars isn't too bad

Cropped:

Long eared owl

Long-eared owls are a little atypical of their raptor brethren, seeming to prefer dense thickets such as these.  How then end up there, or how they can easily fly out is something I'd like to see one day.

Here's a video of the same owl, from one of the wildlife enthusiasts in the crowd pictured above:

The marsh flats of Boundary Bay support the owls with populations of rodents.  It is also the entry point of a 25 km journey for a population of salmon.

Every November to January, chum, coho, and steelhead salmon swim upstream into the tributaries of the Serpentine river.  Many of them target Tynehead Regional Park in Surrey, where there's a hatchery releasing fry into the river each spring.  It's been four years since I visited to see the salmon run.

Before seeing any live fish, we saw (and smelled) the dead ones.  There actually weren't too many clogging up the shorelines, indicating the run is either light this year, or that we were early.  A parks person we spoke with remarked that while it did seem lighter this year, a heavier rain could bring more in later.

Coho in beautiful spawning colours, resting up before continuing her journey upstream

She is the swimming dead.  Resting in an eddy near shore, she's done with spawning, and awaiting her fate.

A male chum, investigating whether the nearly dead female could be coerced into mating.

male chum and a busted lip

Looks like debris but doesn't behave like debris

While snorkeling in Napili Beach in Maui last month, I saw a bit of debris that floated a bit oddly.  It moved to and fro in time with a current that simply didn't exist.  As I stared downwards through about 15 feet of water it entered a gap in the rocks, and ejected sediment.  An octopus!  It was the first time I've seen one in the wild.  I dove down to take a look.

The dark shape on the right. It's open siphon is near the top right. Likely a "day octopus" (Octopus cyanea)

In the absence of weights, I am so buoyant with a full breath of air that I have to expend large amounts of energy with my arms just to keep my head underwater. That makes my body crave air even more. To maximize my bottom time, I've realized it's more important to stay relaxed.  I keep only a third of air in my lungs prior to a dive, which makes me only marginally positively buoyant at the surface, and neutrally buoyant at 15 feet.  But with less stored air, it also means I can only stay underwater about 30 seconds or so (and 15 seconds or so is just to get down to that depth).

The beach that day (and probably most days) was crowded with sunbathers, and there were plenty of snorkelers in the water as well (this is one of the better snorkeling beaches, as it's sheltered by deep rock faces that attracting fish and turtles).  Despite all the snorkelers, few seemed interested in the octopus.  "Where is it?"  "I'll point it out," I offered, as I dove down pointing at the den.  A few seemed to stick around and politely look at what I pointed at for a minute, another stating "I don't see it", but all moving on.  It was, after all, probably too deep for most casual snorkelers.

After a while, I just watched from the surface, as it seemed more inclined to leave it's den when a human wasn't buzzing by with a camera outstretched.  And then, I noticed this:

It had an arm outstretched into a neighbouring crack.  A second octopus was in the other crack!

As with most solitary creatures, mating tends to be a cautious affair. Neither animal has the social experience to predict whether it will be hurt or eaten.  So mating tends to be an "as-far-as-possible" activity, with the male extending an arm to a female, positioning a sperm packet into the mantle (the head) of the female.  The mating I see in documentaries tends to have the octopus out in the open, with mating not lasting for more than a few minutes, so it was interesting to see them in dens going at it for over an hour (I'd hang out at the beach then revisit).  As for whose home turf this was, I didn't stick around long enough to find out.

A Canada Goose that wasn't really Canadian

The snow geese are making fewer appearances in Richmond these days, so I didn't expect to see them when I tried to appease my son to look for them in Terra Nova.

At first, we saw them in a vacant field fenced off from the public, and I thought that would be our best view of them.  The geese then started swarming a more luxurious patch of grass.

This is one of the wealthier areas of Richmond; the dense lawn these geese are fertilizing is cropped short, golf-course style.  Their visit to this patch must be rare - residents were outside on their balconies, snapping videos.

Then we saw this bird, not like the others:

"Canada Goose", I confidently educated my son.  He repeated after me.  We followed behind it to get a better look, as it not only seemed out of place, but to my eye unusually smaller than a typical Canada Goose.  The neck seemed scrawny compared to its white companions.

Later, upon Googling, I realized it might not even be a Canada Goose.  I had no idea there was such a thing as a Cackling Goose, nor did most of the birding world before 2004, when it became officially recognized as a separate species from the Canada Goose.  The Cackling Goose has a smaller body and shorter neck are the more obvious differences from the Canada Goose, as is a steeper head and shorter beak if you should get close enough to see.

They nest in the tundra, which might explain why it's flocked with the snow geese.  Lucky for us, since we never would've given it a second look had it flocked with Canada Geese.

Hoot

While I've seen quite a few different species of owls now, never have I heard one hoot.  That's not to say I haven't heard owls before...just that the ones that I have heard were squacking or shrieking.  In fact, only a few owl species in BC actually hoot.  So a few nights ago, when I heard hooting through the walls of my house, I had to investigate.

Outside our home are several tall conifers.  We noticed a source of hooting in the tree right at our back door.  In fact, in the blackness of the tree, I could see some lighter-coloured movement that must've been the owl.  But it wasn't the only one.  A nearby tree was also responding with hooting; they were calling to each other!  I saw an owl fly off, but there was still hooting at that tree, which meant there must've been three owls initially!  The owls continued calling to each other for quite some time, so after I was satisfied with as good a photo as I could with manual focus and a 50 mm lens, I ran back inside to grab a longer lens. By the time I emerged the second time, the owls were gone.

Here's an excerpt of two of them calling to each other
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mEbsAJqRk3tfNDU6xwB_4xHLo4dh8YhS

The call, combined with a sasquach-like photo makes me fairly certain they were great-horned owls.

Our last snowfall

As coincidence would have it, the arrival of another flock of snow geese came the day before we had an actual snowfall.  Got some closeup video of the geese feeding, and some interesting group behaviour, including the moment when they all notice a pair of bald eagles approaching.

fastest animal in the world

Land: cheetah
Water: sailfish
Air: peregrine falcon

I've seen the falcon a few times, but never this close.

Our local transit authority was trying them out as a deterrent for pigeons that were roosting near the stations and causing problems with droppings and triggering the track intrusion alarms.

What was most interesting was how alert they were.  They'd be continually scanning the sky, not looking in a single direction for more than a second.