On Monday, the 4th, I got up and decided that I'd use my morning to revisit Reifel and try to get photos of the birds I'd missed the day before. I put my equipment in the car and headed south. The route I had chosen goes near Boundary Bay, so I decided to stop by while I was in the vicinity. As I reached the area, though, it was covered in a blanket o' fog.

As I walked along, I could hear Kildeer calling from the flats. Somehow their calls made the morning seem all the more desolate.

On the land side of the dyke, I noticed a Savannah Sparrow perched behind a spiderweb.

I think it was there by accident--I didn't see it hunting spiders or taking the spider's prey.

Now the spiderwebs had caught my eye. The foggy morning had deposited drops of dew all along the webs, and it made the webs really stand out. It probably didn't bode well for the spiders' chances of eating that morning. There were plenty of webs near the dyke...here's another one.

It was a lovely walk out on the dyke, with the damp and the chill and the Kildeer and the occasional illusion of a shifting form in the fog. But the bird action was pretty low-key, so I decided to head back to my car and over to Reifel.

As I was leaving the dyke, I found an unusual sparrow at the side of the gate. Well, the sparrow wasn't really unusual, it's just one that I haven't seen before. I wasn't able to identify it then, but now I can tell that it's a Lincoln's Sparrow. And a handsome little guy, at that.

And here's a male. Either he's in molt or he's very tattered and worn, or both.

The House Sparrows were hanging out in the bushes a little ways past the entrance.

I headed off towards the middle dyke, but I only got about forty paces before I noticed this little girl, who was being all cute.

When I finished taking photos of her, I saw some very interesting feet lurking about. I did a double-take when I first saw them. They say that birds are the closest living relatives to dinosaurs...these feet and legs make me believe it.

So, we have foot quiz question #1: can you name the bird with the feet shown above? (Answers are at the end.)

Well, I proceeded up to where we had seen the Yellow-rumped Warblers the day before, and there were still a whole bunch of them there. There are two main subspecies of the Yellow-rumped: the Audubon's and the Myrtle. There were both of them in this little flock. The most distinctive field mark for distinguishing between the two is the yellow or yellowish throat of the Audubon's vs. the white or whitish throat of the Myrtle. That would mean that this is an Audubon's.

The fact that those two birds were brown means that they are in their first year. Adults are mostly grey. Most of the warblers in the flock were first-year, but there were a few adults around. Maybe they were chaperones.

Although the photos haven't shown it well, it was foggy at Reifel. Every now and then a small flight of Snow Geese would fly over me in the fog or low clouds. I would hear the muffled goose honks get louder for a while, and then, looking up, a few geese would appear out of the clouds, fly over me, and then disappear again into the clouds as their honks faded away. I stopped and took a few photos of these almost ghostly flights.

I proceeded down the middle dyke towards the tower. About ten meters from the main intersection by the tower, I spied some movement on a tree trunk and found a Brown Creeper. I managed to get quite close and got some good close-ups of him. Here he is with a bug in his mouth.

And here's a later photo, showing his curved bill, back plumage, and cool feet, which are specialized for the creeper's favorite activity of hopping up the side of trees.

I thought about making the creeper part of the foot quiz, but that would maybe have been too tough. Not that the foot quiz is easy.

Speaking of which, I was pretty happy about all the good Brown Creeper shots I had gotten as I climbed up onto the observation tower. There I ran into the second set of feet in the quiz. (Don't worry, this is the last question, and you won't be marked on the quiz.)

So, foot quiz question #2: can you name the bird with the red feet shown above? (Answer at the end.)

Aside from the guy with the red feet, nothing much was happening at the tower. There were two of each Yellowlegs and about thirty of Long-billed Dowitchers at the base. I did see a Peregrine Falcon go by, but wasn't quick enough with my camera.

The fog lifted a bit, and I searched along the northwest corner for Mountain Chickadees. This is where we had seen one the day before. While I was out there, I could hear lots of honking from a huge flock of Snow Geese out on the foreshore. At one point, the ruckus really intensified, and the flock took off. Here they are rising up over the marsh--imagine the following density of geese for as far as you can see. There were tens if not hundreds of thousands of birds.

Well, the northwest corner was a bust for chickadees, so I started looking east of the tower. In the fields to the north, I found a bird nearing the other extreme of size, a Great Blue Heron.

He's a cutie, but he's not a Mountain.

So I continued looking for Mountain Chickadees. Eventually I found another type of chickadee, but it was a Chestnut-backed Chickadee. He looks like a Black-capped except for the very red-brown back and flank color. (Compare the buff flanks and olive-grey back of the Black-capped, above.)

Perseverance carried the day and I did eventually find a flock of about six Mountain Chickadees. They look like Black-cappeds with an extra white stripe above the eye. I saw them across a channel of water, so I only got distant shots. Here's a couple of shots of one in flight.

Despite being tired (this being my fourth day in a row toting my camera gear around for hours) I was extremely happy about having found and photographed the Mountains. Things were going well.

But I did notice that I was tired and so I started to head for the exit. On my way, I found a yellow-bodied warbler with a pointy orange/pink bill. It may be a Wilson's, but I didn't get any conclusive photos.

He only tolerated me for about ten photos or so before flying off. Hawks are like that. I was happy with what I'd gotten from him, though.

I had used considerably more than the morning in my adventure, and so I didn't make it in to work that day. All in all, though, it was quite a successful day. I made up for the work later in the week.

Checkin' for Chickadees,
Tom

The answer to foot quiz question #1 is the American Coot. Strange-lookin' fella, ain't he?