Eagle Takes Seagull

This week, whilst walking with my son and my dogs at Ambleside (below the north side of Vancouver's famous Lions Gate Bridge), I watched a flock of seagulls tormenting a pair of eagles.

The tables turned.

This is pretty typical behaviour when springtime nests are threatened, but in this case, the whole thing took place over the waters of Burrard Inlet. We watched as members of the seagull flock swooped around and over the pair of eagles (bald eagles, fully mature, white heads and tails). The eagles usually are pretty good at ignoring this behaviour, but at some point the focus shifted. the two eagles began to dive bomb one of the seagulls from the flock. As we watched this interchange, one of the eagles swung from below up to the seagull, claws extended and plucked it right out of the air. The other eagle flew off.

The hunting eagle dropped straight to the water, wings spread, with its heavy prey. The eagle never stopped flying for a moment, but rearranged its trajectory along the surface of the water. It flew along slowly for maybe 2-3 full minutes, wingtips touching the water with each stroke, and drowned the bird in its claws.

The eagle continued along the surface of the water, and made land on the lighthouse sandbar off the beach at Ambleside, where he ignored all the little birds flying in to take a look, and ate his seagull snack.

I spent the whole time wavering between marvelling at the hunter and kicking self for not having camera.

These shots are taken of birds on Howe Sound.


I love where I live.

~kc

Sea to Sky Landslide Update

In the interests of journalistic integrity, as soon as I heard the Sea to Sky had opened again after the big slide by Porteau Cove, I had to go see for myself.

Knowing that my readers are intent on every detail, I spared no expense and visited the site by both land and sea to get the most thorough viewing. (Nothing I won't do for my blog readers. I'm just saying.)

First, a reminder of how things looked on July 30:














This is a section of the Sea to Sky about 10 minutes up the road from Lions Bay. A few minutes before midnight on July 30th, the cliff-side came down, narrowly missing the back of a Perimeter bus heading north on the highway.





This is what the slide area looks like now, approaching from the waters of Howe Sound.









Peter Keiwit Sons is the highway upgrade contractor, and having their equipment nearby sped the process of clearing the debris.





A bit closer and you can see the digger is still in place.









The rest of the highway continues to be quite a mess, with blasted rock, closed lanes and detours all over the place.













Typical scenic view....












But the slide? This is what it looks like now...the repairs begin at the orange pylon.












The tiny flicks in the rock face here are the remains of the rebar that had been driven in to the rockface to stablize it.

Not exactly successful.













Here is the section of repaired asphalt and the new tracks.











An unperturbed observer -- couldn't care less about rocks, just looking for a decent salmon...











~kc