Last day of June

I visited Hastings Park today for the first time in two weeks.  Birds were scarce.  The only songs I heard were from one loud Warbling Vireo plus single Song and White-crowned Sparrows.  One Mallard brood was done to one lone duckling.  It was getting harder to tell the adults and maturing juveniles Mallards apart.  As some compensation, dragonfly numbers were up and I spotted a number of exuvias (the cast-off shell of the nymph, from which the adult dragonfly emerges) clinging to reed stalks near the board walk.  Several Western Tiger Swallowtail butterflies were also wafting about.  Flowers and shrubs in flower included Fireweed, Douglas's Spirea and Ocean Spray.  White sprays of this year's flowers of the Ocean Spray alternate with the faded yellow blooms from last year.  Less welcome blooms included numerous Field Bindweeds and buttercups.  Saskatoons and Thimbleberries were ripening.  I found several maturing hazelnuts.  A youthful fisher had arrived by skateboard. 

Lady bug and Hazelnuts

Today while peering under the leaves of a hazelnut shrub (Corylus cornuta) in search of ripening nuts, I encountered this lady bug.  I believe it is a Multicolored Asian Lady Beetle, Harmonia axyridis.   The species is native to eastern Asia and was introduced to California in the 1900s as a biological aphid control agent.  It was on a cascara leaf.

I did find several green hazelnuts.  Mature hazelnuts are rare as they are usually harvested by squirrels and crows before they can be found by humans. 

Hazelnuts flower early in the year, in March or even February.  The female and male flowers are born on the same twig.  The female flowers are small with red stigmas while the more noticeable male catkins look like smaller version of alder catkins.  This photo was taken on March 23, 2013.

Honey lucust

Recently I was struck by a sweet scent while walking at the NW corner of the sanctuary.  I traced its source to the blossoms of a medium-sized tree at one end of a small copse on the median between the path and the parking lot.  I wondered if it might be a honey locust tree.  Later research confirmed this to be correct.  I didn't notice any thorns so it may be the of the thornless variety, Gleditsia triacanthos inermis.  More about honey locust trees can be learned here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey_locust.

My intent is to record the natural happenings at Hastings Park in East Vancouver, BC, Canada.  My focus will be mostly, but not exclusively, on the birds that occur on and around the ponds at the south end of the Park, a.k.a The Sanctuary.  Trees, flowers, invertebrates and other animals will be subjects from time to time.  I will occasionally stray into the area around and in the racecourse.

Osprey checking out the stocked trout selection, June 6, 2014.