A lazy spring afternoon

The sun was shining, the sky was mostly blue. There was a bit of a breeze, barely enough to ripple the water. In the estuary, the tide was turning; a pair of seals were cruising about. And many birds.

Three buffleheads.

A pair of cormorants were fishing. They spent more time underwater than on  the surface.

A group of kayakers approached, and all the birds nearby took to the air. This one's a bufflehead male.

On the seaward side of the spit, all the birds were over on the opposite shore, off Quadra Island. Until I reached the northern tip; here there was a lineup of gulls, out at the edge where river water meets the salt chuck. They seemed to be sitting on a submerged sandbar, one that would soon disappear as the tide came in. They weren't resting; the whole line vibrated, with gulls seeming to hop about, flapping their wings, and sometimes lifting off to fly inland.

Gulls in a row.

I sat on a log and watched them  for a while. A few at a time, gulls would leave the line, fly up and circle about in small groups. Then they would head upriver, pass out of sight. At first I thought they were slowly moving to their next stopping place, but no; here they came again, passing over my head, circling, circling, before settling in with the group again. Not going anywhere, just enjoying the warmth of the sunlight. And the next bunch would soar up, taking their turn in the sky.

Gulls do this during windstorms; riding the wind, yelling, tumbling, soaring, rolling, like falling (noisy) leaves in a gale. Or like kids on a toboggan hill under fresh snow. Just plain having fun. This was like that, but slower, gentler, quieter. A celebration of spring.

Coming back to rest.

A Skywatch post.

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Hacía sol, y el cielo estaba, por la mayor parte, azul. Soplaba un viento suave, apenas suficientemente fuerte como para producir onditas en el estuario. La marea estaba baja, pero al punto de empezar a subir; una pareja de focas esperaba, dando vueltas lentas. También los pájaros aprovechaban la tranquilidad.

    1. Bucephala albeola. El macho es el de la corona blanca.

    2. Un cormorán pescando. Estos se pasaban más tiempo sumergidos que visibles.

    3. Se acercaba un grupo de kayakistas, y todos los pájaros se echaron a volar. Este es un Bucephala albeola, macho.

En el lado de la lengua de tierra que da al estrecho, todos los pájaros se habían congregado en la costa opuesta, cerca de la isla Quadra. Hasta que llegué al punto más al norte; aquí se enfilaba una bandada de gaviotas, en medio del agua, donde el agua del estuario se enfrenta con el agua salada del estrecho. Las gaviotas parecían estar acomodados sobre un banco de arena sumergido, un banco que pronto se perdería al subirse la marea. No se quedaban tranquilos; toda la fila parecía vibrar; las gaviotas saltaban, agitando las alas, a veces echándose al aire para volar rio arriba.

    4. Una hilera de gaviotas.

Me senté en un tronco en la playa para observarlas. Unas cuantas gaviotas a la vez dejaban su puesto, iban a dar vueltas en el aire.  Luego, se dirigían hacia el estuario hasta desaparecer en la distancia. Creí, al principio, que ya llegaba la hora en que la bandada se iría a su posadero próximo, pero no; aquí venían otra vez, cruzando sobre mi cabeza, girando, girando, hasta bajar a sentarse con su bandada de nuevo. No se iban a ninguna parte; solamente disfrutaban del calor del sol. Y el próximo grupo se levantaría, tomando su turno en el cielo.

Las gaviotas hacen esto durante los ventarrones, montándose en el viento, gritando, bamboleándose, subiéndose en alto, cayendo, rodando; parecen hojas de otoño en una tormenta. O como niños con sus toboganes divertiéndose en la nieve. Estos vuelos se parecían a aquellos, pero más tranquilos, más lentos, casi en silencio. Vuelos para celebrar la llegada de la primavera.

    5. Regresando a su banco de arena.

Things that made me happy in 2023, Part 2

The springs that come and the summers that go,
Autumn dew on bracken and heather,
The drip of the Forest beneath the snow....
All the things they have seen,
All the things they have heard:
An April sky swept clean and the song of a bird....

(From The Charcoal Burner, Now We are Six, by A.A. Milne.)

Sea and sky and forest floors ...

Again, in no particular order.

A beach, sky, beachgrass in the sunlight. Today, Black Creek estuary.

Silvery bark. February.

A sparrow taking a bath. December.

Poor photo, but still... Teeny-tiny white flowers. No, I don't know what they are. June, airport trail.

An old boat propeller on a friend's board fence. June, again.

A hard, dry fungus on a short stump, black and orange. November, at the museum.

Looking into an alternate universe.

There's a large glass vase on the shelf above my desk, just where it catches the earliest rays of the morning sun and splits them into rainbows up and down my wall. The rest of the time, it shows a reflection of a fictional room, certainly not mine. It gives me two extra doors and a view of the water. I don't know where it gets them from.

The tiniest fly visible with the naked eye. Just a speck on my wall. September.

A cormorant, heading up-river. December, Tyee Spit.

More anon.

A Skywatch post.

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Cosas que me hicieron feliz en 2023, #2.

Las primaveras que vienen, los veranos que se van,

Rocío otoñal sobre los helechos y el brezo,

El goteo del bosque bajo la nieve ...

Todas las cosas que han visto,

Todas las cosas que han oído:

Un cielo limpio de abril, y el canto de un ave ...

(Fragmento del poema, "The Charcoal Burner" por A.A. Milne.)

Fotos:

1. Una playa, el cielo, hierbas halófilas bajo el sol. Hoy, Black Creek.
2. Una corteza de árbol color plata. Febrero.
3. Un gorrión bañándose. Diciembre.
4. Pobre foto, pero me gustó. Flores pequeñísimas, no sé de que especie. Junio, cerca del aeropuerto.
5. Un hélice de barco viejo colgado en la barda de una amiga. Junio.
6. Un hongo duro y seco que crece en un topón cortito en el césped del museo. Noviembre.
7. Una vista de un universo alternativo. Se trata de un vaso de vidrio que permanece en el estante arriba de mi escritorio, justo donde le llegan los primeros rayos del sol en la mañana, y que el vidrio transforma en arco iris y lo pinta en mis paredes. En otros momentos, me muestra lo que parece un reflejo, pero por cierto no es un reflejo de mi cuarto; me da unas dos puertas imaginarias, y una vista al mar.
8. La mosca más pequeña que se puede observar a simple vista. Un puntito en mi pared. Septiembre.
9. Un cormorán cruzando Tyee Spit, volando rio arriba. Diciembre.

Odds and ends

Tidying up the June photo folders: There are distant birds, ...

Eagle in the mist. Oyster Bay.

Cormorant, ready to dive again.

... roadside flowers ...

Foxglove, with 4 spiders and a bug. Can you find them all?

St. John's wort. With glossy beetle. I love the "stiches" around the edges of the petals.

flowers with a leaf for identification purposes ...

False bugbane, Trautvetteria caroliniensis. I think.

Or maybe not.

... and a whole stack of tree trunk photos. But I'll leave those to their own post.

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Estoy organizando las fotos que saqué en junio y que no llegué a subir. Hay pájaros en la distancia, flores al lado del camino, y unas flores con sus hojas, para ayudar en la identificación. Y muchas fotos de troncos de árboles. Pero esas, las dejaré para otro dia.

Fotos:

1. Un águila entre la neblina.
2. Un cormorán listo para sumergirse de nuevo.
3. Unas dedaleras, Digitalis purpurea, con 4 arañas y otro bichito. ¿Los puedes encontrar todos?
4. Hierba de San Juan. Me gustan esas puntadas a las orillas de los pétalos.
5. Trautvetteria caroliniensis. Creo.
6. La hoja.

Catching a few rays

The rain stopped. The sky had blue patches. The cat was basking in the warm sunshine on a windowsill. I hurried with breakfast and went out into the light.

Into the wind and a sprinkling of rain.

The tide was the highest I have seen it here, covering even one of the breakwaters. White-flecked waves pounded the top of the intertidal zone, bringing with them scores of logs. I went to Tyee Spit to watch the birds bouncing on the estuary.

Distant bouncing harlequins.

Lone cormorant. Quadra Island in the background.

The sun faded to a paler spot in the cloud cover. The rain came back. I made it back to the car before the bottom fell out of the sky. Just barely. BC weather!

Discovery Passage, from the tip of Tyee Spit.

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Dejó de llover. En el cielo, se veían islas azules. La gatita dormitaba en la ventana, en la luz y calor del sol. Me apresuré a desayunar y salí a la luz.

Al viento, y ahora, a una lluvia salpicante.

La marea estaba a lo más alto que la he visto; hasta cubría una de las rompeolas. Olas con espuma blanca caían sobre la zona más alta de las playas, apilando troncos y ramas como barrera. Yo me fui a la lengua de tierra Tyee para mirar las aves que brincaban sobre las olas.

Fotos: 1. Patos arlequines en la distancia.

2. Un cormorán solitario. Al otro lado del agua, la isla Quadra.

3. MIrando al norte desde la punta de Tyee.

El sol se redujo a una mancha un poco menos oscuro entre las nubes. Empezó a llover. Llegué al coche justo a tiempo antes de que se soltara el aguacero. ¡Eso es mi Colombia Británica!

Birds on rocks

The sun came out! And the tide was going out, exposing stony stretches of beach. I abandoned my errand in Willow Point, and just kept on driving until I saw cormorants on a rock, parked and hiked down the beach to get within camera range.

Looking back (north) to Willow Point, from Shelter Bay. The birds are behind me.

Out on the far side of the channel, rafts of ducks and other diving birds whiled away the afternoon. On this side, the bird population was staying dry, standing on rocks just offshore.

Mew gulls, I think.

These are small gulls, with yellow legs, a yellow bill with no rings or spots, and black wingtips with white spots. They stood there, ignoring me until I started scrambling from rock to rock to get closer; then they lifted off and exchanged rocks, as if they were playing musical chairs, still ending up standing on the same set of rocks. They were still there when I passed them on my way back. This time, they didn't bother moving.

Next, a great blue heron stood alone on a bigger rock, not fishing or crabbing; he was too far above the water for that. Digesting lunch, probably.

Taking a cormorant pose, while the cormorants in back just sit there.

He had flown away, complaining noisily, as I approached, then returned when I hid behind that big pale rock. When I emerged on the far side, he left again, squawking; "These horrible people with their bustle and clatter! Pah!"

And finally, the cormorants, all lined up, with a loon in the background.

And they didn't mind me, at all. After all, there's all that water between us.

It looks like that rock isn't usually submerged at high tide. Or else the cormorants have been very busy painting it today.

Brown, black, green

The water is low at Cougar Creek Park; they've ripped out the beaver dams again. The creek runs between bare mud banks, and the little lake lies a good foot below the last bit of greenery.

They - whoever "they" are - have cut down the blackberry patch: good; it was invading the only path on the north side. Not so good; they've also cut down the tall grasses where the heron liked to hide, hunting frogs at the edge of the water; they've planted rose bushes instead. We saw no sign of the heron, on this visit.

February: a cold, cloudy day, with the sun occasionally making a half-hearted attempt at piercing the clouds. The shrubs are still just bare stems. What with the mud of the banks, the left-over tangle of felled branches and trees, the remaining dried grasses, all the colours are subdued.

Except for the brilliant green of the mallard males' heads.

Mallards and squiggly reflections

Light and dark

"Black"

And in spite of the low water, the cormorant is back. There must be some fish for him; some small fish that don't mind shallow, muddy water.

Cormorant and mallards

Fisher folk at Cougar Creek Park

. . . the feathered variety:

Distant merganser, with the sunlight catching her hairdo.

Offended heron. (Aren't they all, always?)

Cormorant, one of a pair, coming to check us out.

The cormorant and the mergansers are short-term visitors; the heron is a year-round resident. And the beavers are still busy, keeping the ponds deep and wide.

Cormorant at Cougar Creek

Most of the lagoon at Cougar Creek park was frozen over on Monday, except at the ends where the creek enters and leaves. Mallards, wigeons, and one cormorant shared these small spaces:

Catching a few rays of sunlight on a cold day.

"Ahem! This is MY log!"

"That's better!"

"Then again, my feet get cold out of the water. May as well put up with the noisy things!"

Hung out to dry

We weren't planning to stop at Westham Island bridge; it's always cold and windy there in the winter. But then we saw the cormorants ...

Looking north-east from Westham Island bridge. A light sprinkling of snow on the hills, and five double-crested cormorants on a log. 

They usually sit with their bills slanted upwards. I wonder why.

Drying his wings.

 Most water birds have "unwettable" feathers, so that they dive or dabble and come up dry. Cormorants' outer feathers, in contrast, are "wettable"; this may be helpful, reducing their buoyancy as they make long dives in pursuit of fish. Because of this, they need to air-dry their wings; the water doesn't just roll off. So they are often seen sitting with the wings spread out.

Biologists once thought that deficient production of oils from the preen gland necessitate wing-drying behaviors. We now know, however, that the degree of waterproofing of feathers is primarily due to their microscopic structure, not to their being oiled. ...

Spread-wing postures may serve different purposes in different species. Anhingas, for example, have unusually low metabolic rates and unusually high rates of heat loss from their bodies. ... Thus, it appears that Anhingas adopt a spread-wing posture primarily for thermoregulation -- to absorb solar energy to supplement their low metabolic heat production ...

Cormorants, in contrast, apparently use spread-wing postures only for drying their wings and not for thermoregulation. Although cormorant plumage also retains water, only the outer portion of the feathers is wettable, so an insulating layer of air next to the skin is maintained when cormorants swim underwater. This difference in feather structure may explain why cormorants can spend more time foraging in the water than Anhingas, and why cormorants can inhabit cooler climes, while the Anhinga is restricted to tropical and subtropical waters.

(From Stanford Birds)

I don't know why they "gargle".

The feather patterns are beautiful. It's worth your time to right-click - open link to get a good look at them.

Mute swans and a not-so-mute heron

I love mallards. They're beautiful birds, and funny, too. Even when there are hundreds of them, all quacking at once. Even when they mob me for a few seeds, and I have to push them aside with my feet to walk. Even when I have to inch my car through the parking lot, and they don't see the need to move until the front fender almost touches them. (They remind me of range cattle in the Chilcotin, that way.)

But after you've taken a couple dozen photos of mallards, the cameras get clogged with green head feathers; they crave variety. And on this last visit to Reifel Island, that's what they got. We saw so many different birds that I haven't been able to even sort through all the photos until tonight. And there are too many for one blog post.

May as well get going:

Eagle's nest in the mist.

The fun started even before we got to the bird sanctuary. At the bridge to Westham Island, we parked and walked over (and back). The fog limited our vision to the near at hand:

River's mouth

On the Ladner side, Laurie checked out the eagles' nest we saw last year; one eagle was standing guard. At the river's edge there is a marshy area, enclosed by a log breakwater. A white goose dabbled in the mud there.

It always amazes me how they stay so bright and shiny, digging through all that goop.

Nice clean goose.

Double-crested Cormorants lined up on the breakwater.

Western Grebes, downstream.

One of a pair of Mute Swans. More unspottable white.

We drove on. Passing the last farm before the entrance to Reifel, we stopped again, to watch a heron in the ditch, and startled a hawk. I managed to get a photo, very tiny, very misty:

I think it's a Harrier.

We had interrupted its dinner.

More white feathers, still bright in spite of the situation.

Another hawk was in the trees nearby. I don't know what this is. The more I search through my books, the more confused I get. They don't even look the same from one book to the next, let alone from one time of year, age, or sex to the next. Help!

Sitting raptor. At least that much I know.

On to the heron:

Through the branches.

He wasn't in the mood for photos. Laurie got a bit too close, and the heron took off with the loudest, angriest, harshest, longest "Graaaaaaak!" I had ever heard. Sorry this next photo is blurred; I was laughing too hard to hold steady. If you look closely, you can see his open beak.

"Graaaaak!"

Another heron, standing one-legged, looking like an old woman in a shawl.

Next: we finally get to the starting point.
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