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I hadn't even touched
my camera in over two weeks. My sleep patterns had gotten disrupted
and I was going to bed around 4am and getting up around noon.
This was leaving me with a pretty short exposure to daylight,
and had been discouraging me from going out to do photography.
Well, I let one weekend slip by, and then the next Saturday, but
on Sunday I was determined to get back at it.
I got up around noon
and decided to head down to Reifel. I had lunch in Ladner on the
way. When I got to the refuge, it was a fairly clear day and there
was a Bald Eagle circling overhead. I stopped at the gates, got
my camera out, and started shooting. I thought that maybe I shouldn't
shoot too many eagles, as I had gotten a lot of eagle shots on
my trip up to the Cheakamus River. However,those had been mostly
perched shots, and this guy was flying.
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| After about
five minutes of that, I got back in my car and headed on to the
parking lot. Inside the refuge, the first subjects I found were
a couple of male Common Mergansers on a log. As I was shooting,
they got up, one at a time, and slid down into the water. Here's
the second guy getting ready to get wet. |
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| I watched
the mergansers only a short time before heading further in. I went
to a place where the path opens onto a duck pond, intending to shoot
some other ducks. However, before I started on the ducks I happened
to glance back behind me and saw a hawk sitting on a tree trunk
that had been broken off. It was a light-morph Red-tailed Hawk.
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The red-tail quickly
departed, and I turned my attention to the ducks.
I took only about twenty
duck photos before I got distracted. I first concentrated on a
male American Wigeon. They've got great colors.
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| Then I went
after this male Bufflehead. I was pretty happy with several of the
Bufflehead photos, as I was able to get the different colors of
sheen on the black part of his head, and at the same time not overexpose
the white. Here's one of them, showing the sheen progressing from
green to blue to purple. |
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Often Bufflehead are
pretty shy, and will paddle or fly away if they see a human. This
guy was more tame, as he obviously saw me but (unlike most people
I know) didn't see that as cause for alarm.
The thing that distracted
me from my curious Bufflehead was a Bald Eagle flying over me.
I had looked around and saw him coming, so I got some good photos
of him. This eagle appears to have some wing damage to his inner
left primaries. It doesn't look like molt (natural feather loss
and replacement) to me, but I'm nowhere near an expert on molt.
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| As I pulled
my camera down after shooting the flyby eagle, I noticed a bird
silhouette in the top of a tree in the distance—another eagle.
I took a few shots of him and then headed over to where he was.
It turns out that one of the paths led almost right under his perch.
The tree was too thick with needles to see him from there, so I
went over to his sunward side and shot a few portraits. So far today
I had seen adult eagles, but this one was a one-year-old. |
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That eagle stayed in
the top of that tree for a long time (at least an hour), even
though he had drawn a noisy human crowd on a viewing platform
nearby.
I wandered towards
the north of the refuge, and on the way one of the many Red-winged
Blackbirds paused to pose for me. It was a male, and I couldn't
resist, so I snapped off a few photos. Red-wingeds are awful noisy
beasts, and they can easily drown out other bird calls, but I
really like their pointy-billed shape and the male's plumage:
a contrast of the gold-fringed red epaulets on an otherwise black
coat.
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| Walking
east along the north edge of the park, I found a Great Blue Heron
on a log at the side of a slough. The white of his face really stood
out from the browns all around him. |
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| A short
walk further along, I got a photo of a female Red-winged Blackbird
landing on a branch. These gals are much more nondescript than their
males; there are a lot of different streaked brown birds around. |
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| She hopped
up the branch a ways, into the sunlight, and I got some more photos
of her there. |
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I was soon back near
the refuge entrance and decided to head on. As I was walking back
to my car, though, I noticed some eagles circling up above. I
put some of the gear I was carrying into my car, and then turned
my attention and my camera to the eagles.
The next three photos
are of what I believe is the same individual, a one-year-old,
judging by the wing shape.
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| The pattern
of long and short feathers on the wing is what gives this bird's
age away. There are two groups of long feathers on each wing: one
of five feathers and one of three feathers, giving the trailing
edge a ragged appearance. That raggedness is characteristic of one-year-olds. |
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| Here
he has turned so that the sun lights up his underside; the color
pattern also indicates a one-year-old. |
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| The other
eagle flying overhead was my damaged friend from earlier. This time
he flew directly over me. |
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| And here's
another shot of him, after he's circled a few times. I lowered the
exposure time on this one to try to keep the white head from getting
overexposed. It made the sky turn quite grey. |
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| It was 4:00
and I was worried about the daylight running out on me, so I decided
to go to Brunswick Point, which was nearby. I got there about ten
minutes later and hopped up on the dyke. There I found this tranquil
scene; the ducks are Common Mergansers and the piece of land is
Westham Island. |
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| The mergansers
got a little closer, and I zoomed my lens in on them, and I got
a few photos. There were six ducks in the close group, four males
and two females. (The females are the two bottommost ducks in the
following photo, on the left.) I really don't know what's going
on with the second male, though. He's got his neck stretched in
a very strange way. |
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| Whatever
the problem was, though, it appeared to be contagious. |
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I tried that with my
own neck but I wasn't able to even get my chin up as far as the
last guy did. I guess that pretty much cinches something that
I've suspected for quite some time now: I'm not a merganser. It's
a little disappointing, but I'll get over it.
Not much else was happening
here at the dyke; I watched a Double-crested Cormorant fishing
for a while, and then called it a day.
As I was heading out
along River Road, though, I spotted a predator on the hunt near
the side of the road. I stopped and took some photos of the beast.
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But then it really
was the end of the day, and I made it home without further incident.
Prowling for birdies,
Tom
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