A teenage birdwatcher can be credited in part with saving Maplewood Flats from becoming a shopping centre and marina.
Besides hundreds of bird species, random chunks of concrete, asphalt and bricks can also be spotted throughout the wildlife sanctuary – remaining remnants of a shopping centre plan for Maplewood Flats 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 Flats 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 Flats 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 Flats 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. Daytime temperatures were between -1 and -3 Celsius on the day of the count, sending many birds for shelter in thick shrubs.
There were 50 different bird species spotted, when normally that number is in the range of 60 to 65.
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 Bell, who says he can predict within a week when the martins 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 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 birds migrating north from California and Washington that normally haven’t spread their wings this far, scrub jays and acorn woodpeckers.
Bell turns his scope towards the feeding frenzy on the mudflats. He has a greater yellowlegs shorebird feasting on marine worms in his sights.
“It’s all about food,” says Bell. “There are two things that wildlife are about and it’s getting enough food and reproduction. At the moment it’s about surviving the winter.”
Bell points towards an empty osprey nest perched on a pile used to tie up huge log booms, which once covered this area of Burrard Inlet.
The osprey are in Mexico at the moment, basking in the warmer climes but will come back to Maplewood Flats in the summer.
Suddenly, a murder of crows can be heard making a racket.
“So there’s an eagle over the flats, you can hear the crows,” says Wilson, of the hallmark sign there’s a bigger bird in the area.
Wilson is wearing red which is a faux pas when birding, because the birds can see you coming and will make themselves scarce.
“I would normally wear black,” she says.
Bell tilts the scope skywards towards the eagle’s nest in the tree. Sure enough, the majestic bird is keeping a watchful eye from his perch high above the mudflats.
A sense of serenity and a sanctuary from the daily grind drew Dea to the Maplewood Conservation Area. He could be found exploring the area four or five times a week when he lived by CapU.
“Every day there is something different, you never know what you are going to see or what you are going to find,” says Dea. “It’s nice to be out and just be in the fresh air.”
“There’s a spotted towhee,” Dea says of the large, striking sparrow jumping from bush to bush, flapping its wings.
When it comes to identifying myriad bird species, many with only small distinguishing factors separating them from their cousins, images of birds are seared into Dea’s memory.
He consults reference materials including National Geographic. Nowadays there also birding apps on your phone that identify birds by sight and sound.
The most elusive bird in this area, according to Bell, are any of the owl species, including the saw-whet.
“They are only this small,” says Bell, cupping his hands to show the size of a saw-whet. “They blend right in.”
During the day, saw-whet hide in thick coniferous trees. And they don’t make the trademark “hoo, hoo” owl sound.
“They make more of a screeching noise,” says Bell. “Sometimes you can find owls because a lot of the small birds find them and they mob them. They yell and shout at them. Then you get a whole bunch of chickadees and juncos and robins. And then you know there’s something there.”
A “lucky” bird find during this year’s count was a bohemian waxwing, mainly grey, about the size of a robin and distinguishable by yellow, white and red streaking on the wings.
A lot of birders will use cameras to capture their finds, but Bell says he can’t be bothered to take pictures. He likes to travel light when out in the field.
Bell, an ornithologist who studied at SFU, has had an innate curiosity about wildlife since he was a child growing up near Belfast, Ireland.
“The bird that got me started was a little chickadee,” he recalls.” It was a cold winter in 1947 and a blue tit was huddled in our garage. And it was very cold weather so it was all fluffed up.”
Bell cupped the tiny bird with his hands and brought it to his mother and they cared for it.
While he is a longtime champion of wildlife and environmental preservation on the North Shore, he acknowledges his predecessors who put up the good fight.
“Back in the ’50s and ’60s there were people that fought to save the intertidal mudflats,” he says.
Founded in 1993, Wild Bird Trust of B.C., of which Bell is a director, are the environmental stewards of the conservation area.
The Wild Bird Trust created the North Shore’s first wildlife sanctuary from 76 acres of mostly fill, some of which was contaminated.
"When I first came down here it was like a desert almost," recalls Bell of the barren land.
Wild Bird Trust covered the area with tree and plant species, including ponderosa pine, red cedar, ash, California redwood and Douglas fir, to name but a few.
The broader the diversity of plant and tree species, the more food there is for wildlife, says Bell.
The site now boasts four provincially blue-listed (at risk) species and a bird list which has grown from 208 to 249.
River otters, turtles, black-tailed deer, harbour seals, mink, coyotes and black bears are some of the larger wildlife species that find a temporary or long-term home in the area. Bell is especially amused by the river otters that play around the mudflats all year.
“They are a neat animal. And they play. They love to slide down snow or mud,” he says.
Currently the Maplewood Conservation Area is legally protected by the District of North Vancouver and the federal government.
The area was gifted for conservation by its landowners, Port of Vancouver and the district.
But Bell knows nothing is for certain in life. “With any area like this there are always developers that come along that say, ‘Oh, it’s nothing but scrub,’ he says.
“The biggest security is the public wanting it kept – that is the actual bottom line. And if they are prepared to fight for it.”
