Saturday the 30th I headed south as usual. My first stop was near the Boundary Bay Airport on 72nd Street in Delta, looking again for the Ash-throated Flycatcher. I hadn't been entirely satisfied with my previous photos of it. I got there around 11am and was greeted by a Northern Harrier who flew over me on his way west.

I searched up and down the hedgerow for about half an hour before locating the flycatcher. But I did find him, and the light was much better than last time I was there. Here's the elusive little fellow.

I was also going to look for a Bohemian Waxwing, but decided to head on to lunch instead, as I hadn't had breakfast that morning. On my way back to the car, a Red-tailed Hawk flew over.

After lunch in Ladner, I headed over to Reifel. Proceeding along the east edge, I stopped when I saw what I thought was a Mountain Chickadee. It was a small, flitting bird with a light stripe over the eye.

When the bird got close to me, though, I noticed that it had a reddish breast. This meant that it wasn't a chickadee. It turns out that I was looking at a Red-breasted Nuthatch...and he was looking back at me

Mostly, though, he was was hanging upside-down and picking at that pinecone. He was a lifer for me.

After the nuthatch, I turned off the east path and headed for the center of the refuge. There I found a few Buffleheads and decided to work on getting photos of them. Male Buffleheads are tough photographic subjects, with broad areas of both black and white on them, and I don't think that I've yet taken a close-up photo of one that I'm happy with. The white parts of the duck tend to overexpose.

At some angles, one can see purple and green iridescence in the black plumage of the Bufflehead, as in the above photo.

Here's one preening. I was attracted to the abstract shape of the white parts of the bird in this photo. Even so, the white is still a bit too bright on his flanks.

Buffleheads are diving ducks, and it was a bit frustrating to try to get shots of them floating around, as they were always diving under. So I decided I'd try to get shots of them diving as well as floating. Here's a two-shot sequence of one taking the plunge.

I also took a few shots of the female Buffleheads, like this one who came up to talk to me. It turns out that she wasn't the only duck to take this approach with me this day.

I also noticed a few male Canvasbacks out on the pond--those of the evil red eyes. These guys were much closer than the ones from the other day at Iona.

What I didn't know about Canvasbacks is that they have white eyelids.

A bunch of sparrows were foraging on the ground nearby. I took a few shots of them, including this one of an immature White-crowned.

The Gadwalls swam away past some dowitchers and I proceeded along the outer dyke. I was now at the west end of the refuge, heading south. I stopped when I encountered a group of about four people who had stopped to observe a group of about four Sandhill Cranes. The cranes were milling around in the water and on the shore at the foot of the dyke.

Sandhills make great subjects; they don't seem to shy away from humans at all. At least, the ones at Reifel are that way; perhaps other ones are more shy. I don't have any experience with them outside of the refuge, aside from a few that I've seen flying over me.

I continued my walk south to the path that leads from the outer dyke back towards the center of the sanctuary. There I found a pair of what appeared to be duck wings, which was all that remained of a bird who probably fell prey to one of the local raptors.

I was a bit tired, so I took the opportunity to sit for a while on a bench near the path junction. The bench had a good view over a pond where a lot of ducks were paddling around, and I was able to photograph said ducks from said bench. The ducks included ten or fifteen Lesser Scaups, like this fellow.

He didn't really like all of the attention I was paying to him, so he steamed over to give me a piece of his mind.

Well, I told him that I didn't want to intrude, and that the photos wouldn't come out until after they were long gone, anyway. That seemed to settle him some, although he never really came back close to the bench afterwards.

On the other hand, there was a pair of American Wigeons near me, on the lip of the pond, who were hanging around patiently, just waiting for me to take their photo.

They gave me about five minutes of shooting, and then jumped in and headed off southward.

I had had a good little rest, so I got up and promptly noticed that the view behind where I had been sitting included the four Sandhill Cranes. Now I had enough distance on them to get all four into one photo. Unfortunately, the light on them wasn't ideal.

I started vaguely back in the direction of the parking lot. About halfway back, I came to a path intersection where a Ruby-crowned Kinglet was flitting around. These little guys don't sit still long, and I played catch-a-photo-of-the-kinglet with him for about five minutes. If you're not familiar with this game, the photographer scores one point for every clear photo of the kinglet, and the kinglet scores one point for every blurry or bad photo and for every photo of the branch where the kinglet used to be. We started out pretty even (I was even up 3 to 2 at one point), but then he stopped fooling around and beat me 20 to 8. Here's one of my eight.

After about twenty minutes with the Hooded Mergansers, I called it a day. I made it back to the car without further incident and headed home to save my photos and get ready for Sunday.

Needing more practice at catch-a-photo-of-the-kinglet,
Tom