On Saturday the 23rd I got up early and headed down south to my usual haunts. I hit Ladner Trunk Road around 9, and decided to dip down to the bay. I turned down one of the higher-numbered streets, and stopped almost immediately when I saw a largish bird eating white berries from a bush. It was a female Northern Flicker.

I think that someone forgot to tell her that as a flicker, she's a type of woodpecker, and she should be knocking on wood and eating insects. Quality control has really been slipping down at the bird factory.

Her vegetarian diet doesn't seem to have done her any harm, though, as she still cuts quite a beautiful figure. Have a look at her landing on another plant and tell me if you don't agree.

I was happy with how the Pintail cooperated for my camera, but my next subject, the Bufflehead, was not so accommodating. Bufflehead are more shy than Northern Pintails, and less prevalent at the refuge, so I had to be more patient and shoot from a longer distance.

Of course, it was worth it. I think that Bufflehead, especially the males, are really cute little critters. They're quite small, being about half the length of a Mallard, as you can see in this photo.

In contrast, the Northern Pintail is about the same size as a Mallard.

The female Bufflehead is grey-brown, with a white patch on the side of her head. Here's a shot of both a male and a female.

Bufflehead males aren't that easy to photograph, as they have both bright white and dark black on them. It's hard not to overexpose the white or underexpose the black.

If you think Buffleheads are pushovers because they're small, you'd better think again. I told this guy that his mother was a loon and he came charging right at me.

Actually, I think he was just taking off. And I admit to having removed a Mallard head from the foreground of that photo in Photoshop.

And on the subject of cute little ducks, there was a male Hooded Merganser floating about, with his hood down. These guys are just a bit bigger than Bufflehead. But they've got those mesmerizing yellow eyes.

After spending about 45 minutes with the ducks, I got up, and looked up, and noticed a Bald Eagle coming my way. He went past without stopping or circling..

I trod on, reaching the viewing tower around 11:30, where I watched the nearby feeders to see if anything unusual would show up. Nothing did, but I did get a few good shots of the ever-present Black-capped Chickadees.

Well, out over the foreshore I heard a big commotion. Something had the visiting Snow Geese in a tizzy and they all lifted up into the sky. Here is just a very small portion of the flock. (I wasn't carrying my wide-angle lens.)

Reifel is famous for the huge flock of Snow Geese that winter there.

I started heading back along the middle dyke, and came upon this Lesser Scaup in the pond to the east of me. I only took a few shots, as he was far away, and the clearest one turned out a little overexposed.

A little closer to me was a bird of a different sort. This guy isn't a duck, he's a grebe...a Pied-billed Grebe. He's small, about the same size as the Bufflehead. Seeing this guy, I thought about the photos I had gotten earlier in the year of a Pied-billed Grebe feeding its young.

I proceded to the east edge of the refuge, to look along the path for owls. I didn't find any owls, but I did find an interesting scene in the field to my east...a collection of ducks (mainly Mallard, American Wigeon, and Northern Pintail) spread across a well-irrigated field. I couldn't resist the natural element of the birds with the imposed form of the parallel lines in the field, and ended up with around 100 photos of the scene. Here's one, with the strong convergence leading the eye to the trees in the background.

And here's another, which to me looks more like "a day at the beach for ducks."

After those landscapes, I decided to head on, and made my way back towards the parking lot. At the warming hut (which is right inside the entrance) I looked out over the pond and found a female Hooded Merganser. I'm always amazed at how different the females of this species look from the males (the yellow-eye white-spot-on-head little duck from eight pictures ago). The hood on the male always looks solid, and the hood on the female seems wispy and often translucent.

However, I'm puzzled by this. I can think of no reason why it would be evolutionarily advantageous for your legs to turn more yellow with age. Hmmmm.

There were a few Rock Doves around, too, and I was captivated by their colors. Here's one with a little bit of brown mixed in with the grey.

As the duck ruckus died down, I saw a female American Wigeon in the area. Biding my time until I could get her relatively alone, I did some close-ups of her head and face.

I know she's a duck, and probably has different tastes than I do, but a bill full of mud just can't taste good. It ain't right.

The geese landed on the other side of a line of trees. And then another flight came in and did the same. I decided to go over there and see if I could get shots of them on the ground.

But before I could make my way through the maze of ducks, a guy who had been standing near me pointed out that it wasn't only the birds that seemed to be swarming up around the lady distributing the birdseed--the fish appeared to be doing the same.

Now that was an odd sight to see. I don't know if they were really coming up to eat what the lady was giving out, or if they were just hanging in the shallows as part of their spawning process.

After getting a few shots of the fish, I headed around a stand of trees to the place where the Snow Geese had been landing. There I was treated to a field full of them. Faithful photographer that I am, I stayed and photographed them, despite being fairly tired already. I was rewarded with some decent medium-range goose studies. In this one, the darker individuals in the front are juveniles.

There is a dark variant of the Snow Goose, which used to be called the Blue Goose, but I didn't see any in the flock. I have spoken with someone who said that they found two of them there at the refuge, though, so I'll keep looking.

Every now and then, small flights of geese would come or go.They seemed to be a bit awkward in flight, though, and I even saw a midair collision or two.

I frequently see a pair of eagles around this area, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's this same pair that I'm always seeing. Then again, at Reifel I've seen groups of three or four eagles, so there may be more than one pair in the area.

Following the fall fowl,
Tom