Tag Archives: Tynehead Park

A bird in the hand

November 10, 2013 Maurice 4 Comments

On Sunday we went for a long walk in Tynehead Park. There are lots of streams throughout the park, and they are filled with spawning salmon. It’s really amazing how large some of these fish are! The main Serpentine branch is filled with salmon, lots of species, struggling to make their way back up to the spawning grounds.

There are predators looking for an easy meal too. Otters and minks can be seen quickly wrestling a fish out of the water. We didn’t see any bears though I’m sure they are around. Tynehead has had warning signs about bears in the past, but not this weekend.

While walking the upper forest, we saw a family standing perfectly still alongside the path with their hands out. I thought it was as strange place to be looking for spare change, but nope, not that. They had some bird seed in the palm of their hands and the birds would swoop down, briefly land, grab a seed or a nut and flit away. The lady offered Pam a handful, and this little movie is what took place!

All About Max

New camera shots

September 16, 2010 Maurice Leave a comment

We’ve picked up a new camera for our yearly Caribbean excursion, and we’re test driving it around town this week. After doing a lot of research we decided on the Panasonic Lumix TS2, which has a lot of features, along with an underwater mode.

We went up to Tynehead Regional park hoping to see some salmon in the streams, but no salmon have shown up yet. Not sure why – I thought they would be here by now.

It was a nice fall day, warm and a little humid. The picture of Pam and Max was in the offleash section of the park.

The camera has an interesting macro mode, allowing you to be within just a couple centimeters of item and still focus well. I want to experiment with that, so that hopefully our fish pictures will be better this year when we are in Aruba and Curacao.

There is a High Definition movie mode that is really amazing. I’m looking for a converter to get them on the web in high-def, but I haven’t found a good one yet. When I do, I’ll put a movie up. It really is a remarkable feature of the camera! The movies are truly amazing.

All About Max, Surrey Parks

Tynehead Regional Park, North Surrey

May 6, 2010 Maurice 1 Comment

Tynehead Regional Park is a 260 hectare park in North Surrey. It includes a protected salmon hatchery, an off leash dog park, wide open spaces with picnic tables, public restrooms, and lots of trails though some of the coolest forest that Max and I have cruised through in a long while. The Serpentine River winds through the park, and it cascades all over the place. It chirps and laughs and tinkles all through the park. You hear it flowing over the rocks, under the bridges, and over the flat lands. In the fall it is packed with salmon returning to spawn.

There is a trail called Trillium Trail, which in the early spring is covered in trillium flowers, a flower of the lily family. Canadians of course, know that it is the official provincial flower of Ontario but it is also the official wildflower of Ohio. It’s a delicate flower, that can be seriously harmed by picking the bloom. It is protected in many places. Another interesting thing about the trillium is that it is germinated by ants! The ants take a sort of pod back to their nests, and the seed is contained within the pod. They eat the pod and discard the seed!
Max and I climbed Trillium Trail which meanders up a steep embankment, over which you can see the Serpentine River snaking through the forest hundreds of feet below. There is a log fence to prevent you from falling over the cliff. As we neared the top of the ascent, there seemed to be a viewing platform that poked out over the cliff. It actually surrounded a large tree, about 30 feet off the forest floor and it was basically a tree house! It’s a very cool structure!

We didn’t get to the off leash side of the park – in fact I didn’t even realize there was an off leash park, but we’ll get there soon! This park is definitely worth another visit. There were lots of trails we didn’t explore, but we will! There were stumps of huge trees that had been logged many years ago, and you could still see the notches cut by the loggers in order to climb the mammoth beasts! Awesome trees – awesome sizes… Sad to see them gone.