The 10th was a Monday and I hadn't been out with my camera for a couple of weeks. I managed to clear away my work by midafternoon and so I took my camera and headed down to Delta to see if anything photogenic was hanging around.
I took my usual route, down the highway, off onto Ladner Trunk Road, and soon thereafter turning left onto 112th Street. Right after I got onto 112th, I saw some big mounds of mulch in a field to my left. The mounds had snow on their shady side, and the patterns and colors seemed sufficiently photogenic to me. |
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| With a little maneuvering, I was able to get Mt. Baker into the action as well. |
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| Further down the road, just where it meets Hornby Drive, there was a Bald Eagle sitting with some Starlings in a tree. I suppose he was giving them a lecture on the benefits of a diet rich in fish, or something like that. |
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| But then again, maybe he was just ignoring them. Starlings don't tend to get much respect. |
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| I drove the length of Hornby, with just one side trip, down 104th, where I didn't find anything of interest. Hornby meets back up with Ladner Trunk, and from there I took 88th Street. I drove 88th to the end, and walked up onto the dyke to see what was happening out in the bay. It was the usual winter bay scene, with shorebirds and ducks and gulls spread about on the foreshore and in the shallows. |
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After just a couple of photos, I got back in the car, because there really isn't parking at the foot of 88th Street.
From there, I headed over to 72nd Street, where there is parking next to the dyke. I stopped briefly about halfway down because the field on the west side of the road looked quite interesting. Before I turned my attention to that, though, I checked out the path that runs on the east side of the road there. I only found a couple of signs of life; the first was a horde of ducks having a party in the slough. |
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They were mostly, if not entirely, Mallards.
My second lively subject was hiding in the tangle of berry plants. He was a Ruby-crowned Kinglet, and his camouflage worked well. See if you can spot him. |
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(He's about a quarter of the way up the photo, right above the word "rights".)
The interesting field to the west of the road was filled with pumpkins and snow. Depending on which direction I was shooting, the pumpkins either looked like they were topped with snow, |
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| or they weren't. |
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| I took quite a few shots of the pumpkins. Brightly-colored subjects tend to bring out that tendency in me. I even sat down in the snow in the roadside ditch in order to get some low-angle shots. |
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| I nearly froze my behind off, but it was worth it. The lower angle added a more intimate feel to the photos. |
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Eventually I opted to head back to the car and sit for a while with the heater on so as to warm my poor glutes.
After a few minutes of that, I headed on down to the end of the road, parked, and went out on a little walk down the dyke. There weren't immediately many good subjects, so I amused myself by taking a few photos of Starlings, playing around with getting the mountains and fields in the background just how I wanted them. |
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| As I went further along the dyke, I spotted a big raptor in a tree on the golf course to the north. I was pretty sure it was a Rough-Legged Hawk, but it took some later consultation with my friends to make me completely convinced. |
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| I walked a bit further along, but the light was starting to fade. Days aren't very long here in the winter. I started thinking about and taking sunset photos. |
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| A few Northern Harriers were out, cruising above the foreshore, looking for a snack. Here's one of them I caught against the pink-and-blue background motif. |
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| I turned around and headed west, back along the dyke towards my car. The sun in my eyes was strong and bothering me, so I decided to make the best of it and aimed my camera right at it. The resulting photos looked much darker than it really was outside. |
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I liked the lens flare—the two bright spots around the treeline—that I got in that shot.
Pointing my camera back the other way, I found the Rough-Legged Hawk again. This time he was being circled by a crow. |
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| My final bird of the day was a Great Blue Heron skulking in the ditch beside the dyke. |
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That heron was keeping a close eye on me, and ended up flying when I started walking along the dyke again.
I got back to my car right around the time the sun was disappearing, and I got my fisheye lens out of my bag in the trunk just to see what I could get with it. A few clicks and several Photoshop tricks later, I got a few interesting renditions of sunset at the bay. |
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Well, they're interesting to me, at least.
I've prepared larger versions of both of these fisheye shots; clicking on the photo should bring up the larger version.
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By the time I took that last shot, the light was really dim and I was quite chilled, so I warmed myself for quite some time in the car and then headed home.
Now with toasty warm glutes,
Tom
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