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Having devoted a lot
of photos to ducklings recently, I felt that it was only fair
that I devote some to the other conspicuous young birds of spring,
goslings. And just as ducklings generally means Mallards, goslings
around here generally means Canada Geese. So on Thursday, after
finishing work around 4:00, I headed down to a place where I would
be guaranteed goslings: Piper Spit on Burnaby Lake.
And sure enough, the
first subject I got once I was at the spit was a gosling. Here's
the little cutie now.
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| I took a
few shots of that gosling and its family, and then turned to the
other side of the spit, where I found my leucistic friend Lulu,
up on shore enjoying the sunny day. |
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Another group of goslings
came by: there seemed to be three or four families in the area
right now.
Adult Canada Geese
are fairly big birds, and so the young ones have to grow quite
a bit to reach proper size. In the spring and summer it's always
nice to see how big they've gotten and how much they've developed.
Here's a little goose that appears to be a week or so further
along than the little one above: he's quite noticably larger,
with a longer neck (and more propensity to have it extended),
and smaller head-to-body-size ratio.
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| Here's another
one of a similar age. |
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| And another. |
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| After tiring
of the angles I was getting on the geese, I headed off down the
spit in search of other subjects. The first that I found were a
few Tree Swallows on top of some swallow nest boxes across a little
water to the east. |
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| Out at the
end of the spit, I found the Pied-billed Grebe who had been there
on my last visit, two weeks before. This time he posed in some decent
sunlight for me. |
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| As is usual
in the spring and summer, there were swallows flying all around
the spit. I watched them for a while, and soon noticed that some
of them were slightly more robust than the others, with white marks
on the tops of their head. These were Cliff Swallows. |
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That was neat, because
they were my first Cliffs of the year. I'm fond of Cliff Swallows
for some reason.
Maybe it's just that
I'm fond of swallows in general. Here's a third type of swallow
that was there that day, a Violet-green Swallow. I always think
of them as tall, thin and elegant. This bird was kind enough to
perch for me for a while.
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| But only
for a little while...he was a swallow, after all. |
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| After the
Violet-green took off, I turned around and noticed that the little
grebe had surfaced with a little fish. |
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Grebes are pretty good
at fishing, but that's probably just snack-sized for him.
As I walked back in,
I noticed a few dowitchers foraging in the shallows.. As near
as I can tell, they were the Long-billed variety.
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| A little
further towards dry land, Lulu and her family came sailing up the
side of the spit. It looks like she's got four little ones this
year. I was happy to see that...she had been near some goslings
earlier, but I wasn't quite sure if they were hers. |
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| She saw
me with my camera and coaxed her hubby and little charges over towards
me, so that I could get some good photos. (She's a pretty friendly
goose.) I had to decrease the magnification on my zoom lens to fit
them all in. |
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| Once they
got closer, I extended my lens again and was able to get nice closeups
on one of the children. |
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That little tyke was
my last subject that day, and was quite a fitting end to a trip
whose target bird was goslings..
Enamoured of the downy
gooselets,
Tom
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