Just before new year we went for a walk at Second Beach and for lunch at Vera's Burger Shack on Denman St. Vera's do fantastic burgers, made with real meat rather than the stuff they serve up at the big chains.
While we walked around the seawall we ran into a chap with a long lens photographing the birds out on English Bay. Neither of my sons can resist talking to new people, especially if they have gadgets, and this was no exception - my elder son immediately struck up a conversation. He and his wife were long-time Vancouverites and are hard-core lovers of Stanley Park. He is in the process of building a web site about the natural history of Stanley Park and we spent a wonderful half hour chatting and wandering with him and his wife. They were wonderful with the boys and told them all sorts of interesting things about the beach and the birds we could see around us. It's great to live in a place where you can bump into people like that who will give their time so freely.
So Elder took this photo of the birds that our friend was looking at - not bad for a beginner! They are Surf Scoters and they gather in English Bay (and no doubt many of the other coastal wetlands of the Pacific Northwest) in late Autumn every year.

These pictures give a hint of the devastation suffered by the trees in Stanley Park during the windstorms of late December 2006. Prospect Point seems to have suffered the worst. This picture shows stacks of logs in the parking lot by the café there - I assume these are just logs from trees that fell across the roadway. There are still many many limbs, branches and whole trees left lying within the forest and most of the the trails are closed.
The second photo shows the damage by the road just beyond Prospect Point. As you pass the Point, the road does a tight bend back on itself and the area enclosed by the bend has almost been flattened. What I found most incredible about the damage is seeing mature trees that have obviously been snapped in half, the shredded stumps left sticking out of the ground. 

I went up to Prospect Point this evening to try and take some photos of the devastation of the trees. If decimation is the removal of 10% of a group of soldiers then could the destruction of 20% of the trees in Stanley Park be called ventilation? Unfortunately the sunset light was blocked by yet another rain storm, so it was too dark to really see the tree damage.

I did like this picture because to me it's another of those little encapsulations of Vancouver - the rain, the sun, the forests, the buildings, the natural beauty of the mountains and the man-made elegance of Lion's Gate bridge.