Moorecroft Park

 Friday's gentle hike was at Moorecroft Park in Nanoose Bay - one of my favourite short and easy hikes/walks close to home, offering beautiful ocean vistas, lovely forest trails, a meadow, a boggy pond, and a few side trails to residential areas or little known coves.  

It was raining when we arrived, so we started with the forest trails where the trees offered some protection from the rain. We rambled past the pond and through the meadow and kept right on going to the La Selva Trailhead on a cul-de-sac, then backtracked and  took a main trail down through the forest and over to Vesper Point.  By then, the rain had stopped and the sun was attempting to appear. There was a cold wind blowing and the waves were dashing up against the rocks as an eagle called from the trees and a brave gull took his morning shower.  

We noted a new bench at the viewpoint, and stopped for a few minutes in the small grassey picnic area overlooking a quiet bay.  

The park property has an interesting history (https://moorecroft.org). It was first established as a girl's summer camp by Gertrude Moore in 1934. It interested me to learn that Moore was the first Director of Physical Education for Women at the University of British Columbia.  In the 1950s,  Moore sold the property to the United Church who ran it as a summer camp and eventually as a year round operation for camps and retreats and other events.  When the church sold the property to the regional district a dozen or so years ago, it was under a Conservation Covenant, held by the Nature Conservancy of Canada, and that covenant has guided its development. Eventually, most of the camp buildings were deemed unsafe and removed, but the old boathouse still stands. 

We decided to take another side trail, which led us out to a cove we'd not seen before.  There were "No Trespassing" signs high in the trees on either side of the trail, but the trail itself had a Regional District trail sign down by the cove, pointing up to the main park trail.  Our best guess is that the cove is a landing area for kayaks and canoeists and the trail is to provide them access to Moorecroft Park.  We spied a lovely old stone staircase in the rocky cliff to one side but chose to respect the No Trespassing sign rather than examine it more closely. 

We did, however, choose a log in the cove on which to have our lunch. In between bites of my sandwich, I photographed waves bursting over the rocky outcroppings.  

Our lunch spot in a quiet little cove

Sally, my hiking buddy,  spied some birds among the rocks (can you spot them in the photo above?) and I zoomed in as far as my small camera would allow - I have yet to buy a harness that might make possible bringing the new Canon with its more powerful zoom lens along.  We thought, from the way the birds moved, that they were sandpipers and we weren't far wrong. But when I uploaded the photos to the computer and zoomed in further, I could see they had bright yellow legs, yellow on the beak, and a shorter beak than the sandpipers I'm familiar with.  My bird book offered no clues so I posted the photos to a naturalist group I belong to on Facebook, and quickly had a name for them:  surfbirds, aka Calidris Virgata (formerly Aphriza Virgata) of the order Chardriformes, Family Scolopacidae (the same family as sandpipers).  

I also learned that it is not that common to see them here - they mostly winter further south and then move to Alaska and Yukon for breeding season, so were likely just passing through.  Surfbirds spend most of their lives "in the splash zone of rocky ocean shorelines" (allaboutbirds.org) where they feast on whatever the surf washes up as well as other plant and animal life.  These ones were certainly busy checking every nook and cranny of the rocks after each wave - and they certainly were in the splash zone!

Birds in the splash zone!

They don't seem to mind getting wet - they made
no attempt to run away from the waves. 

After lunch, we headed back up the trail and back through the forest, past the meadow, and alongside the pond.  We passed a tree covered with "witches butter" (a type of fungus), admired the bull rushes and talked about how the red-winged blackbirds will soon be here.  

Across from the pond was another new bench, with a beautiful inscription that really resonated with me.   I cannot find the verse on the internet , but I learned that Helga Schmitt was a local woman who passed away in 2017 at age 56, and she loved nature, dogs, and photography.  I think I would have liked her! 

And soon we were back at the parking lot.   Total distance: 3 miles. Total time (including lunch, nature discussions, and photo stops) 3 hours.  Total enjoyment: every minute of it. 

This Time Last Year

 On our walk around the neighbourhood yesterday, I spotted several signs of spring - two clumps of yellow crocuses just opening their sleepy heads, a half dozen dandelions decorating the boulevard, dozens of robins singing as they flew from treetop to treetop, one small daisy standing amid the grass by the sidewalk, and countless new shoots poking up through the cold dirt.  

My intention was to go back and photograph them today for a blog post, but a bitterly cold wind and a forecast of snow and a still-sore back led to a chance of plans.  And a week filled with appointments and other commitments has meant little time for photography.  And then it hit me - I hardly posted anything last year yet I had taken photos with good intentions to do so.  And so I went back to this day last year and sure enough - there were the spring flowers, and the birds, and a even a few beach shots.  

So....in the interest of giving you something to read with your morning coffee, here's what we saw on our neighbourhood walk this time last year:

Apparently, we also walked down to the community park and along the beach that day too, for the file also showed gardeners working on the beds in the aboretum, crows clustered on a tree, plovers fishing along the shore and.....a happy Maggie on the sand.  

It couldn't have been as cold then as it is today, for I also photographed a woman walking barefoot along the water's edge - though her very pink feet suggest the water was chilly for sure.

And apparently this gull had chilly feet too (and from the out-of-focus photo, my hands were probably cold too):

Spring was a little further along last year, but we will soon catch up, I hope.  The forecasted snow for today did not materialize (yet!), and  the crocuses and dandelions and robins and daisy and countless new shoots are harbingers of that wonderful reawakening of nature.  If my back and the weather cooperate, I'll be out there capturing it with the camera. 

Brushing those winter doldrums away!

 The days have been gray and dreary for a couple of weeks and I do not cope well with that.  But today, the sun tried hard to emerge and pops of blue appeared in the sky.  My back has been bothering me this week so I had called off my usual Friday hike, but nothing, nothing was going to keep me indoors. So swallowing a few pain pills, grabbing my new camera, and leashing up Maggie, we headed to Craig Bay Heritage Park, where we could walk on soft surfaces, find lots of places to sit and rest, and enjoy the ocean view. 

As we headed down the trail, we saw the first signs of spring - masses of snowdrops in bloom.  If snowdrops are blooming, crocuses will soon follow, then daffodils, then tulips......oh, my heart rejoices in the thought of spring flowers and blossoms everywhere. 

As we neared the water, we heard an eagle cry.  There in the trees, high above us, the eagle sat gazing out to sea and telling the world all about it.

Perhaps the eagle was reminding us that it is nearly time for the Brant goose migration - a time when our beaches are closed to dogs for two months to allow the geese to regain their energy and fatten themselves on their long journey from Mexico to Alaska.  The closures don't start for a couple more weeks, but the geese apparently didn't check the local bylaws because there were plenty of them in Craig Bay today.

Maggie and I wandered the shoreline, stopping frequently to take photos. Maggie has a favourite boulder on this beach - it is low at one end, high at the other, so she can easily access it but still be elevated enough to survey her world.  This day, however, someone had made stone piles on the high end, and Maggie was too respectful to knock them over, though she certainly had something to say to them.

What're you doing on MY boulder?

But once she had said her piece, she settled down and enjoyed the view for awhile.

Is someone gonna move these things for me, please?

I guess I can share. 

They're kinda nice.  Very quiet. Pretty, too.  Just like me. 

I persuaded her to walk a bit further, and we investigated sea shells and rocks and interesting bits of roots along the beach.  

This was part of a tree root that had washed ashore.
I liked the swirls and colours in it.

When we stopped for another rest, we were entertained by crows who chattered away as they explored logs for whatever it is crows find in logs.

We moved back from shoreline to trail, and stopped to rest once more on one of the wood Adirondack chairs that have been placed along the edge where one can watch the tide ebb and flow. Maggie sat beside me as I played with camera settings and snapped away at my perfect model.

And soon the sun was dipping down behind the treetops and the air was getting chilly and Maggie's tummy clock was saying "It's dinner time - let's go home!"

And so we did.  

Jack Point / Biggs Park

 With days still short and dark and weather unpredictable, and many trails closed for repairs or impassable, our Friday hikes have been close to home along familiar paths, often in local parks.  This past Friday we did an old favourite - Jack Point/Biggs Park in south Nanaimo, located alongside the Duke Point Ferry terminal. 

The trail is easy (with the exception of a few long steep sets of stairs), and once past a short section that parallels the road, it is peaceful and beautiful.  The rocks along the shoreline have been worn smooth, some hollowed into caves, some - like the one right of centre in this photo - rolled into a large smooth ball as the tides turn it between two harder rock faces:

There are many viewpoints and places to rest, little side trails that lead to benches overlooking the bay or leading down to small rocky coves.  Sometimes the tide blocks access to some rocky outcroppings, other times an agile person can easily explore rocky tidal pools and shallow caves in the cliffs.  The winter daytime tides were high enough to hide some of our usual favourite photography spots, but this little island and the lone tree reflected in the water drew my eye:

The trail was only washed out by storms in one spot, where logs had driven hard into a small cove.  Amazingly, the bridge was still standing and the trail still passable. 

Heading down the point, there are views of downtown Nanaimo, and as one reaches the tip of the point, we see cargo ships waiting to enter the docks to load and unload, as well as big ferries coming and going from Duke Point and small ferries going back and forth to Gabriola Island.  Small float planes also fly overhead and the occasional helicopter too. 

We eat our lunch near the lighthouse at the end of the point, where a cormorant or two always stands guard, self-appointed keepers of the light.

As the waters are churned up by the ferries, seals and sea lions pop up to catch the fish disturbed by the wake.  A raven chatters overhead, his gurgling "krak krak krak" reminding me of a wood block percussion instrument with its hollow-sounding short musical notes that can be heard for up to a mile.  We hear him but can't locate him, but do spot the eagle who is singing soprano - or screeching soprano - in accompaniment. 

The sea mammals, including a pair of  river otters, were entertaining but difficult to capture with the lens - these two were curious about us but not in a position to gain a good focus. 

Heading back mid afternoon, the winter sun decided to make an appearance low in the sky through the clouds, lighting up the bay and casting an eerie glow.  

Peaceful, calming, spiritually refreshing - nature always knows how to calm the soul and wash away the winter blahs.