So Murphy and I have been wandering our neighbourhood, discovering everything from giant hills to turn of the century houses to entire parks. A couple of days ago we stumbled upon Hunter Park, pictured above. Actually this is just one of at least 5 entrances, and the only one that's this obvious.

North Vancouver has a network of walkways. Nearly every street has a little, barely noticeable entrance like this:

You'd miss them if you weren't purposely looking for them. Almost every street in my neighbourhood seems to have these, and most just connect up to another street. But some of them open up into parks. Here's the view from Hunter Park to the "outside world":

Murphy and I have been having a great time exploring the walkways, just walking through all of them to see where they go. We've ended up on the other side of the neighbourhood, in little fields, at the top of the steepest hill in North Vancouver, and at Princess Park, which seems to be a gathering place for dogs. But Hunter Park is my favourite so far. We'd actually ended up there before, but I'd only seen one small part of it. It was only this week that I discovered the vast majority of the park.

But before we get to that, notice the sign by the park entrance there? North Vancouver seems to put up signs for everything. Here's a close up of this one:

You'll notice that this is posted against a tree, whereas the one in the photo with the house was on a post, but it's the same sign (this closeup was taken at a different point in the same park). Don't you love how it's "Guardians" and not "Owners"? Very politically correct. But that's nothing! Check out this sign:

And this park features all three! Nothing like a city council with a sense of humour. And it's not only the dog signs that are like this. A city planting on the corner of my block features a sign that reads "This flower bed is now metric. Please NO FEET!".

Anyway, I'm getting off topic. Back to Hunter Park. So Murphy and I wandered in here at the beginning of this week, so I had to go back with my camera today, especially since it was the first day in what seemed like forever to actually feature some sun. By the entrance that's shown at the top of this update there's a little bridge that goes across a stream to a street on the other side of the park. I tried to get a picture of Murphy sitting there, but he was too excited:

This part of the park is only maybe 100 meters wide, with houses on either side. It's essentially an extended backyard to all the houses on either side. But when you're down in the park it feels like you're in the wilderness. Here's Murph in the stream:

At its deepest point it's just barely up to his shoulders. But most of it is extremely shallow, so that both he and I can walk across it:

The stream is surrounded by trees, and there's a thick canopy overhead, so much so that a drizzling rain, and sun, barely penetrates it:

I had to lighten up almost all of these pictures because, even though it was sunny, it was very shaded in the park. Murphy runs all over the places, loving the path and the water:

The picture above I'd tried to pose by having him sit on the path and then calling him to me, so as to get an action shot. But he took off so quickly I had to shoot blindly, hoping that he hadn't cleared the area that I was photographing! To our right was this:

It's easy to forget you're in the middle of a neighbourhood, but there they are, houses just off the path. But the best part of Hunter Park is further along the path, and over a little bridge:

Now you probably couldn't see in the first picture of the pond, but there's all sorts of wildlife in it. Here's a bit of a closer view:

Ducks with ducklings! We'd spotted three adults on our last visit - two females and a male. And I'd nearly killed myself as I didn't have my camera. I'd had my fingers crossed on our return today, that they'd still be there. And there they were, with seven ducklings. Here's a blurry but intelligible close up, with all the babies piled up together:

Mom hung out with the babies for awhile, then she and a duckling went out for swims. First the baby went out:

Now Murphy is very much a bird dog - he still has those hunting instincts. He LOVES looking at these ducks, in fact it's hard to get his attention back to get him walking around the pond:

Thank God this fence has been erected to protect the pond, or Murphy would have been in there swimming towards the poor ducks. But ducks weren't the only kind of wildlife we saw. Check out the photos below:

When I spotted this I thought I was fooling myself. As far as I know there are no indigenous species of turtles in Vancouver (or Canada for that matter). I was at quite a distance, so I guessed that my eyes were playing tricks on me. But I got closer and saw:

Yep, it's a turtle alright! I'm guessing that someone dumped their pet turtle here. Until I just wrote the word "dumped" right there I was thinking how cute this was. I mean, without any opposite gendered turtles, it's not like they're going to take over the pond. And it seems fine, and Vancouver is temperate...but what about when winter comes? Maybe this turtle hasn't been here long, and will be okay in spring and summer...until we hit the freezing mark. I'm going to have to call Animal Protection tomorrow...

Update June 5: I hadn't had much luck looking up info on turtles native to BC, but Allie googled "Turtle BC" and found this info on the Painted Turtle on our Ministry of Environment's webpage:

Plastron (belly) length: Males: 9-17 cm, Females: up to 22 cm.
Weight: Males: 800 g; Females: 1400 g.
The top shell or carapace is generally black to greenish.
Yellow stripes on the head, neck, tail, and legs, as well as red markings around the edges of the plastron (belly) and under the rim of the carapace.

Painted Turtles are the most northerly occurring, and most widespread turtles in North America.

In British Columbia, turtles are irregularly distributed but locally abundant in Southern Interior valleys, including the Rocky Mountain Trench north to Golden, the Creston and Nelson areas, the Okanagan Valley and the Kamloops-Shuswap lakes area; also a population near William's Lake; recorded in the Fraser Valley from Vancouver to Hope, in the Sechelt-Powell River area, and on southeast Vancouver Island.

Painted Turtles inhabit muddy bottomed ponds and marshes, the margins of small lakes, sluggish streams and river back-waters with abundant aquatic plants.

Preferred basking sites include boulders, floating logs and other sites surrounded by water.

It all fits with what I saw - it isn't a dumped pet, and isn't threatend by or threatening the environment! I was literally worrying myself sick about this little guy, and was waiting until Monday (today) to call either Wildlife or Domestic Animal Protection. But a little voice was telling me that I might look like a fool if there are indeed native turtles, so I was waiting to talk to a family member who wouldn't think I was a complete moron. Thank you Allie for figuring this out!

And yes, I am the one with a Biology degree, and she holds an Arts and an Education Degrees...I'm well aware of the irony.

But, if you believe it, this wasn't the strangest thing I saw. There were other people in the park, we passed by a mom with her toddler on a trike, kids cycling, even a couple with the husband on a wheelchair, using a ventilator (that's exciting to a respiratory therapist). But the most unusual thing was this:

You can't really see detail in the photo, but look at the guy's left hand. See how it's outstretched? Curled around his fingers was a snake! He was just out walking with a snake on his hand! We'd passed by him earlier, so when I saw him around the pond I had to use my zoom and snap a picture of him.

But getting back to indigenous species, this is a salmon habitat. Canadians take their salmon very seriously, and they're afforded all sorts of protection, from signs to reclaimed streams to special construction. Here's a couple of shots of this:

Dogs get humourous signs, salmon get bright yellow caution signs. I'm surprised they didn't put little construction hats on the fish, but then we take salmon seriously around here! About a quarter of the way around the pond is this:

A little fish ladder that goes from the pond gently down to the stream. Murphy tried to wade into this, but my near hysterical screaming convinced him to turn around. If someone were to catch my dog in the salmon ladder it would not be taken lightly.

So we continued on around the pond. Just like the rest of the park there are houses around it, but set further back. The only building by the pond is this one:

It's some sort of log cabin clubhouse for the neighbouring homes. I'd taken a closer look when we'd first discovered the pond back in September. It has big meeting rooms complete with chandeliers.

Murphy had a grand time wandering around the pond, sniffing and running and greeting passers-by. And of course doing this:

...keeping an eye out for those ducks, even as we were leaving! But we couldn't stay there all day, or at least I couldn't, so we turned around and started home. I'd put Murphy back on his leash while we stepped outside the park to get a picture of one of the hidden entrances, and on our return we spotted this:

...one of our local horses! We've come across two separate homes that keep horses in our neighbourhood, one of which is this little private area that includes the clubhouse pictured above. It strikes me as odd, as we're not exactly in a rural area! Anyway, I couldn't have asked for a better day to have brought my camera. We come across horses maybe once or twice a year in our parks. And thank GOD I'd put him on leash, as Murphy is completely convinced that horses are just slightly-larger-than-Mastiff dogs. He play bows, runs around them, and waggles. It's all very friendly, if only it were directed at a DOG. The poor horses alternately ignore him or freak out. But this one wasn't at all disturbed by him, or by these creatures:

Three local little girls playing in the park. They followed along behind the horse for awhile, then went to play in the forest. But not before the littlest one, probably about 7, spoke up; "I'm scared of dogs with long ears" she said to Murphy as they passed us. I explained that he has those ears to trap scent when he's hunting (in theory) but all three of them just looked at me like I was crazy. At any rate, it strikes me as an odd thing to be scared of about a dog. Really, shouldn't overall size or tooth length be the determining factor here?

So we walked back to our entrance to the park, the horse passed us by as they were doubling back, and we headed home. here's a shot of where the park lies in relation to one of our main streets:

The houses to the left back onto the east end of the park. It's a very convenient location for us, as we just walk along those sidewalks about 4 blocks and we're there! It takes us about 10 minutes to walk there, because Murphy has to sniff everything as we go. But we made it home, and Murphy got right back into his favourite spot:

So that's it, three updates in one night, although I'll spread out posting them over 3 days so everyone sees each of them. Hope you enjoyed it!

Email me!

Meghan

Here's the link to the next update: July 2006
Here's the link to the previous update: Spring 2006

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