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Penguin Plunge
Hundreds braved the icy waters off Panorama Park or watched from the shore at the annual event.
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Cove culture
Award-winning roots and blues artist Babe Gurr plays two shows at Deep Cove Shaw Theatre this month.
January 2017
9900 Circulation East of the Seymour River
For the birds: saving Maplewood mudflats by MARIA SPITALE-LEISK
A teenage birdwatcher can be credited in part with saving Maplewood mudflats. Besides 60 species of birds, random chunks of concrete, asphalt and bricks can also be spotted throughout the wildlife sanctuary – remaining remnants of a shopping centre plan for Maplewood mudflats thwarted by environmentalists. “What you are standing on is all fill – concrete, asphalt, bricks, boulders from the highrises built in the West End in the 1960s,” says Kevin Bell, a well-known North Shore naturalist and birding expert. The fill materials were dumped with the intention that a developer was eventually going to pave the mudflats and put up a shopping centre – “a sort of mini Lonsdale Quay” – and a marina. You’ve got to put yourself in the mindset of the 1950s – environmental preservation didn’t matter to most people back then, says Bell. For three decades the Maplewood mudflats and its wildlife values were under threat from circling developers, according to Bell. Bell was feeling like he was fighting a losing battle until he met teenage birdwatcher Stamatis Zogaris at the mudlflats one day in 1993. When Zogaris, 14, learned the area was set to be developed, he told Bell: “You’ve got to fight to save the whole thing.” Bell made his new friend a deal: write a leaflet about why the Maplewood mudflats should be saved and he will get Western Canada Wilderness Committee to publish it. “I never thought he would do it,” says Bell with a laugh. “But he did.” So Bell made good on his promise to join the fight to protect the mudflats, as part of a group called the Save Maplewood Committee. “This is the last intertidal mudflat on the North Shore,” explains Bell. “At one time it stretched from here to the Lions Gate Bridge. So this was the last chance to save something.” Bell totes a spotting scope as he ambles in the frigid air through the
Maplewood Flats Conservation Area in late December. Fellow longtime birders Larry Dea and Janice Wilson join Bell for a small-scale reenactment of the annual Christmas Bird Count. The bird count – a North American tradition dating back 100 years – is timed for mid-winter when all the birds have stopped migrating. Between the window of Dec. 14 and Jan. 5, birding enthusiasts in each region choose a day to spend from dawn to dusk identifying and recording birds they spot in their prescribed circle, which is approximately 24 kilometres in diameter. The icy pathways are an indication the numbers are down this year in the Deep Cove area. There were 50 different bird species spotted, when normally that number is in the range of 60 to 65. Daytime temperature were between -1 and -3 Celsius on the day of the count, sending many birds for shelter in thick shrubs. Bell and his volunteer crew of two were assigned Area E in the bird count, east of the Second Narrows bridge to Cates Park. The enthusiastic trio made stops at Maplewood Farm and Cates Park to count birds but were most successful on their home turf. “This is the best place, the conservation area, because of the intertidal area and the different habitats,” explains Bell. He plants his state-of-the-art scope on the shoreline and surveys the expansive intertidal zone that stretches for about a kilometre on this day. Bubbles rise to the surface of the shallow waters, indicating shellfish below and a smorgasbord for the seagulls screeching overhead. Mew gulls spend the winter here, says Bell, explaining how they are smaller, daintier and more refined than your common Vancouver seagull. “They don’t eat garbage,” he adds. “They eat worms and things that live in the mudflats.” Bell gets particularly excited when the purple martins come back in the springtime. “At the moment they are in the Amazon rainforest for the winter,” says
Larry Dea sets his sights on shorebirds during a feeding frenzy in the intertidal zone of the Maplewood Conservation Area. PHOTO LISA KING
they were on the verge of extinction in B.C., but these nest boxes helped saved them, says Bell. At the same time, he’s seeing
Bell, who says he can predict within a week when they will be back in the Maplewood area. The largest North American swallow, these martins nest in boxes perched on posts in the intertidal area. At one time
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