|
On Saturday the 4th
I left home around noon and headed southwest. I first decided
to go check on the swans on 64th Street to see if they were near
the road. They weren't, and after just a couple of minutes watching
them through binoculars, I set my sights on Reifel and got the
car in gear.
When I was turning
onto Ladner Trunk Road, I noticed a raptor circling above. I drove
along a little and then found a side road into a housing subdivision.
There I was able to stop and see that my raptor was a Red-tailed
Hawk. I wasn't near close enough for good photos, though, so I
chased that hawk through the subdivision and eventually found
myself at the end of a road looking out over a field. I got out
of my car with my camera, and I find, closer than the hawk, a
Bald Eagle. He came almost directly over me.
|
|
 |
| After taking
a few shots of him, I looked around and eventually found my Red-tail.
He was again too far away for great shots, but I took a few anyway.
Here's one of them that shows his fancy coloring. |
|
 |
| Now, all
the time I've been out of my car, I've been hearing eagle calls.
I look over the field and notice that there are a lot of eagles
up there...eight of them. With the lens I had on the camera, I wasn't
able to get all eight in one shot; the best I did was six. |
|
 |
| I just stood
and watched and listened to them all flying around for a while.
Occasionally one would take a little swoop at another one or fly
alongside them. Sometimes they flew over close to where I was. |
|
 |
| It was a
marvelous sunny day, and I guess there were good thermal air currents
above the field, because those eagles kept circling and soaring.
|
|
 |
| After about
twenty minutes of eagle-watching, I walked a little towards a canal
between the road and the field. This startled a Double-crested Cormorant
who had been in the water in the canal, and he took off. I got a
few flight shots of him when he turned back and flew in front of
me. |
|
 |
| Then I was
off to Reifel. At the gate to the sanctuary, I stopped to look for
the Golden Eagle that is sometimes reported there. I didn't find
the eagle, but I did see my first swallows of the year: three Tree
Swallows on a power wire. I took a few record shots of one of them. |
|
 |
|
As I drove in, several
wrens flew across the road, and I unsuccessfully tried to get
photos of one from the car. I got to the parking lot and saw my
friends Walter and Colin coming out, and we chatted for a while.
While talking, we noticed Grant and Marcia sitting over at the
picnic tables with their friend Jim from Florida, whom I had met
about this time last year there at Reifel. Jim showed us some
very nice Florida bird photos on the little display on the back
of his camera, and I resolved to get to Florida one of these years
when I'm not busy. As if such a time will ever come...
Our little get-together
eventually broke up, with all of the others heading out and me
staying around. I decided to walk back up the entrance drive to
see if I could get a photo of one of those wrens.
I stopped alot along
the way to take photos, though. There were a lot of different
ducks in the slough, and a few things in the trees and bushes.
First up were these three male Common Mergansers, swimming formation
down the far side of the slough.
|
|
 |
| Next was
a male Northern Pintail. |
|
 |
| A little
ways further along, I found a pair of Northern Shovelers in fairly
close. This one is the male... |
|
 |
| and this
one the female. |
|
 |
| And there
was a single male Gadwall out there, too. |
|
 |
| I had reached
a place where my friends had reported seeing a Hutton's Vireo, but
without their ears, I had to rely on luck to find it. And luck didn't
seem to be with me just then. So I contented myself with what I
was able to find flitting around, like this little Bushtit. |
|
 |
| And this
Black-capped Chickadee, who stopped by with a bunch of his friends. |
|
 |
| I combed
the area where I had seen the wrens when I came in, but my luck
with things I was looking for continued to be lacking. As I was
walking back towards the parking lot, I heard the familiar cacophony
of a flock of Snow Geese in flight behind me. I turned around and
got a few shots of the flock in flight. It's always pretty special
to hear a Snow Goose flock. |
|
 |
| I was still
looking for wrens and vireos when a Varied Thrush flew by and landed
in the trees between the road and the slough. There were too many
intervening branches to get a clear shot of him, though. Although
this looks like a clear shot, there were actually tree branches
between me and him; they're just way out of focus. Those
intervening branches are what is causing the front of his head to
look a little blurry. |
|
 |
|
Shooting right through
thin things like branches or chain-link fences is a neat photographic
trick, but unless you're really close to the obstruction, it can
end up compromising the quality of the photo.
Back at the parking
lot, I turned my attention to an American Coot who was brave enough
to come up fairly close to me.
|
|
 |
|
I then went in to the
sanctuary proper and stopped by the warming shack to see what
was on the pond behind it. Several ducks were paddling around
right below the porch of the shack. They were accustomed to people
being on the porch, and didn't seem to mind coming close in, so
I took the opportunity and spent some time taking shots of them.
My primary subjects
there were a pair of Greater Scaup. This is the male.
|
|
 |
| This is
the female. |
|
 |
| And here's
the pair of them together. |
|
 |
| I took a
lot of scaup photos, and was about to go, when a drake American
Wigeon came by and asked for a portrait. It's hard to deny a wigeon,
so I put my tripod back down and took some shots of him. He was
a good subject, though, and in the end I offered him two portraits:
one a full-body standard pose, |
|
 |
| and the
other a much more expressive character shot. |
|
 |
|
He liked them both.
I headed on towards
the first blind, and outside of it I found a number of White-crowned
Sparrows. This one is a juvenile.
|
|
 |
| And this
one is an adult. |
|
 |
|
There were a number
of House Sparrows around, too, and I got a few shots of this striking
male. This is one sharp-looking bird: his black, white, grey,
and brown are all very crisp right now. Often House Sparrows look
pretty ragged.
|
|
 |
|
I next continued westward
towards the outer dyke. I found this Spotted Towhee on the path
in front of me, and from the look of his glare, he didn't appreciate
my presence.
|
|
 |
|
I skirted around him
and continued to the next trail intersection, where I headed south.
I passed a few light-colored female mallards and some vocal Red-winged
Blackbirds. As I was nearing the outer dyke, I heard a Sandhill
Crane bugling up in front of me.
|
|
 |
|
The cranes were on
the trail, as they often are. Many of the cranes at Reifel have
little fear of humans, especially when the humans don't make sudden
motions. So I stood relatively still, taking photos, and the cranes
just kept coming down the path towards me.
|
|
 |
| Soon enough
they were quite close to me. |
|
 |
|
In fact, they walked
within about a half a meter of me, and I kept taking photos.
The sun was getting
fairly far down, though, and I figured it would be best to head
back home. So I walked by the cranes and back towards the entrance.
At Fuller's Slough, one of the juvenile Black-crowned Night-Herons
was out. Not only that, but he was also on the move. This is a
little unusual; most of the time they just sit still.
Here I got a blurry
photo of him coming towards me. I really like this angle because
it shows just how wide his head is.
|
|
 |
|
Normal herons, like
the Great Blue, don't have such a wide head. It makes this bird
look rather funky and odd to me.
This next shot is a
more typical Black-crowned Night-Heron shot. Normally I see these
guys in roughly this pose, were you don't even get a hint of that
big honkin' head.
|
|
 |
|
Maybe he's self-conscious
about his horizontally-gifted cerebrum and that's why he always
keeps it turned to the side like that.
The night-heron was
my last subject in Reifel. After I left Reifel and Westham Island,
though, I took a little tour through Ladner. I stopped only once,
though, for a steep-angle shot of a pair of eagles by their nest.
|
|
 |
|
Spring is definitely
coming, and hopefully there will soon be little horizontally-normal
heads poking up out of that nest, crying for food.
A little horizontally-gifted
myself,
Tom
|
|