A line of black specks

With the colder weather, flocks of Black Scoters turn up on our coast. They breed farther north, in Alaska, and the Yukon and, on the other side of the continent, near Hudson's Bay. In late fall, they head south. I saw a small flock, as usual, far enough off-shore to present as a line of black specks. The camera sees better.

Black scoters, Melanitta americana.

Black scoter males are solid black, except for the bright yellow knob at the top of the bill. The bottom and tip of the beak is black. Females are brown with a pale face; their beaks are dark.

The "line of dark specks".

These are diving ducks; diving as deep as 20 metres in search of shellfish.

They ... hunt for shellfish, which they wrench off the underwater rocks with their sturdy bills before swallowing them whole and grinding them up in their muscular gizzards. One wonders how much of the bluish sand along our coasts, made from pulverized mussel shells, has been processed by the alimentary canals of these ducks. (From Birds of Coastal British Columbia)

While I watched this small flock, something disturbed them and suddenly they all leapt into the air, making a great splashing in the processs. They didn't fly off, but just lifted themselves a bit above the water, then settled down in the same spot. I wondered what had startled them; maybe a seal passing underneath?

Much ado about something.

Back to mushrooms, next.

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Con la llegada de temperaturas bajas, aparecen en nuestra costa bandadas de negrones americanos. Se reproducen en el norte, en Alaska, el territorio Yukon, y al otro lado del continente, cerca de la Bahía Hudson, y a finales de otoño, se dirigen al sur, para pasar el invierno a lo largo de ambas costas de norteamérica. Vi una bandada, a una distancia en que se veía solamente una linea de puntos negros. La cámara tiene mejor vista.

1. Negrones americanos, Melanitta americana. Los machos son completamente negros aparte de una protuberancia amarilla encima del pico negro. Las hembras son de color café, con una cara pálida; el pico es oscuro.
2. La "linea de puntos negros".
3. Levantándose al aire con gran alboroto.

Estos son patos buceadores, y se sumergen hasta unos 20 metros en busca de su comida, moluscos y otros crustáceos.

Buscan crustaceos, los cuales arrancan de las piedras submarinas con sus picos fuertes antes de tragárselos enteros y luego molerlos dentro de sus mollejas musculares. Nos preguntamos cuanto de la arena con tintes azules de nuestras costas, constituida de conchas de mejillones pulverizados ha sido producido por los canales alimentarios de estos patos. (From Birds of Coastal British Columbia)

Mientras observaba esta bandada pequeña, algo les inquietó y de repente todos saltaron al aire, chapoteando. No se fueron volando, sino que solamente sacaron los pies del agua, y luego volvieron a nadar tranquilamente en el mismo sitio. Parecía que algo les había asustado, ¿una foca pasando debajo de las olas, tal vez?

Bouncing birds

A mixed flock of waterfowl were diving off-shore among choppy waves. The main flock was harlequin ducks; a bit beyond them buffleheads and  common mergansers and a few mallards joined in the fun. As long as I stayed still, sitting on a rock well back, they came in close to the shore, where the low tide left their favourite morsels close to the surface.

Harlequin ducks. The males are the bright coloured ones.

A harlequin pair, taking a break.

Common mergansers. The female is brown, the male showy.

As seen by the big camera, which doesn't zoom well.

The buffleheads were too bouncy, too fast; the only photo I kept of them went instead to "The Worst Bird Photographs Ever" on Facebook.

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Una bandada mixta de pájaros buceadores nadaban cerca de la playa entre olas agitadas. En su mayoría eran patos arlequines; un poco mar adentro les acompañaban porrones coronados y serretas grandes. Por un rato, algunos patos de collar se les arrimaron. Mientras que yo me quedaba quieta sentada en una roca a alguna distancia, se acercaban a bucear donde la marea baja dejaba expuestos sus bocados favoritos.

Fotos: patos arlequines, y (foto # 3) serretas grandes. Los porrones brincaban sobre las alas demasiado; la única foto que guardé de ellos, la mandé al grupo en Facebook dedicado a "Los Peores Fotos de Pájaros "

 

Common goldeneyes

On the last blue water day, a half-dozen common goldeneye males were diving near Tyee Spit:

Two males. The head is dark green, appearing almost black against the light.

Three males. No females were swimming with this group, although this is the time of year for pairing off.

Ducks in the distance

I must confess; sometimes, briefly, I envy those people down on the shore with their foot-long (or more) lenses attached to their cameras, and their sturdy tripods to hold up those lenses, too heavy for human hands. Because they can point that equipment at a bird that we can all barely see, press the shutter button, and record the gleam in the bird's eye, while I'm still squinting into the light, wondering if that circle on the water was made by a diving duck or a loon.

Briefly. Then I look at the lenses: heavy. And the tripods: heavy and awkward. And am glad that I can be more flexible, and that my back doesn't ache, even if my birds are dots on the slough.

Woodhus Slough, with buffleheads and mallards.

Bufflehead female, off Tyee Spit, with tree shadows.

Coming closer: Barrow's Goldeneye female, by Tyee Spit airplane dock.

A few minutes after I saw the Goldeneye, I was on my knees at an old log, taking photos of lichen and miniature polypores. Do that with your foot-long lens, will you?

Black and white

On the beach at Boundary Bay:

Pretty cockle, about 1 inch across.

Baby sculpin, about 1/2 inch long, trying to be invisible. At full size (click) you can see the rays of the tail fin, and the fanning pectoral fins.

And a male bufflehead, on Centennial Beach duck pond:

The black head is iridescent; here it glows purplish.

In lieu of beavers

"Let's go check on the beavers," Laurie said. It was raining and miserable in Strathcona, so we cancelled our plans for the afternoon and went home to Delta, and down to Cougar Creek to see how the beaver were doing.

We didn't see them, as usual. They've rebuilt three dams, and something was swimming about underwater, blowing bubbles; an otter or two, or a beaver. We never saw anything break the surface.

But there were ducks, and new spring growth, and reflections on the water; we weren't disappointed.

Reflections of trees in duck-disturbed water

Wigeon and squiggles

Male hooded merganser, between dives.

His mate, far in the distance

Mallard pair, on mirror-like water

Indian plum, just starting to bloom

I love how these early salmon berry blossoms start out all crinkly.

Laurie just had to take this view of a wild rose tangle; stems and thorns. Wicked thorns.

Robin hunting for worms in the grass.

Blogger has been uncooperative tonight; it wouldn't load any of my photos, nor would they upload to Picasa for Blogger's use. I linked these from Flickr, but over Blogger's protests. If they're not showing up, let me know in the comments. Thanks!

Now we know it's spring

On the White Rock beach yesterday, it was so warm that we had to take off our jackets. That's a first for this year. The tide was high, and a mixed flock of waterfowl were diving for goodies, some fairly close to shore, most too far out to identify.

View of the pier, with one bird close enough to be visible.

Common goldeneye, male.

I always have to look it up: the Common goldeneye has a round white patch on his cheek; the Barrow's has a comma-shaped patch. Otherwise, at a distance, they are very similar.

Quite a few of the divers were almost completely black, except for a white patch on the breast or a white ring around the neck, and a yellow beak. They were probably Barrow's females.

(About those computer problems; it's working again. But only as long as I rest it on a layer of ice packs. I think the fan is kaput, but at least I'm still online, for now.)

Holes in the water

We stopped on a shady curve in the trail at Reifel Island, where a mixed flock of ducks, dabblers and divers together, rested in a shallow, muddy little bay. I tossed in duck seed, and they splashed, up-ended, dived, collided, and occasionally fought, each after his preference.

Northern pintail, coot, and mallards.

I was surprised at how well the water seemed to hold its shape, sometimes bubbly, sometimes in a slow upwards splash, sometimes leaving depressions and outright holes in the surface, even after the ducks had moved on to the next handful of seed. Could the mud content and the temperature, just this side of freezing, have anything to do with it? Or were our cameras faster than usual? Or have I just not been noticing?

Scaups and mallard rear ends.

When the divers went down, they carved out a hole for their head and made another for the feet, rolling from one to the other. (Look closely at the duck in the middle, above.) In our photos, several of these double holes show up with no diver visible at all.

I'll have to watch the water more closely next time; maybe that's the way it always is, and I've been distracted by the ducks themselves.

End of a vacation in blues and greens

We're home again, tired, sunburned, and salty. We dawdled on the way home, taking random side-trips, exploring, discovering unexpected delights. I'll start sorting photos as soon as I get some sleep.

Family of diving birds, Saltery Bay

And for now, Goodnight, all!

Because I needed a reminder

Scaups, Reifel Island, in breeding plumage:

Female scaup. Just another small brown diver (3/4 Mallard size), but identifiable by the bluish beak.

Face view. Bluish bill, yellow eyes, whitish patch at base of bill.

Male scaup. White sides, stripy back, black head and tail. Blue bill and glossy head.

Male, front end. Tall, angled head suggests Lesser Scaup. Purplish gloss on crown agrees. Greater Scaup males' heads have a greenish tinge.

These are diving birds. They don't stay down for long, and usually come up fairly close to where they went under. Considerate of them.

They will take grain tossed into the water. Some divers won't, but then, those ones are usually seen far offshore. Scaups hang around wharves (Greater) or in small ponds and close to the trails on Reifel Island (both G. and Lesser).  They mostly breed in northern forests, and may be gone by next month, although maybe these are planning to stay put. Some do.

I still can't tell the female Lesser from the f. Greater. Practice, practice.

Sudden death on a sunny day

Warning: this is another "dead bird" post. It's not gruesome, at least, but it is still sad; a beautiful bird struck down in his prime.

We were walking along the railway tracks heading in to Crescent Beach, and saw a black heap in the ditch alongside. It was a bird, freshly killed, entire except for the head, which appeared to be whacked off cleanly, as with a cleaver. Nothing else was damaged.

Surf scoter, as we found him.

The feet were intriguing. I had never seen any like that before; a vivid orange-red, with black webbing between the toes. The webbing defined the bird as a waterfowl, but without a head, we couldn't identify it.

Underside. The toes on this side are spotted with black. The flight feathers are grey underneath.

I had to read through the descriptions of black waterfowl in 4 of our guides before I found a description of the feet. This is a male surf scoter, a common bird off-shore, but which we usually see like this ...

Flock of surf scoters, off Centennial Beach. Far off.

They are a distinctive bird, but the defining characteristics are on the head. A white patch on the forehead, another on the back of the neck, and that fat orange, white and black bill. The feet, almost as dramatic, are rarely visible. (But I wish I had learned about them some other way.)

Photo from Wikipedia, by Alan Wilson. Creative Commons.

I found a very few photos showing the entire bird, on the web. Here is a good one, part of a series.

But what killed the bird? Not a predator; an eagle or an owl would have left nothing but feathers behind, a fox would have scattered feathers everywhere and left, maybe a few bones. The head had been cut off, not chewed off.

We have come to the conclusion that it was probably a collision with a train, possibly with some protrusion, something that removed the head with one blow. At least there was no long-drawn-out suffering involved.

The tracks. The trains come along here at a fair clip.

Four ducks and a grebe

All day, the wind has been howling down the stove vent and splatting raindrops against the windows. Outside, it blows right through my fall jacket. (Out on the water beyond the Island, they say, the waves went over 30 feet high.) It was a good day to clean house and sort out hard drives. A good evening to organize photos of calm summer weather.

These photos were among them, taken two weeks ago at Reifel Island Migratory Bird Sanctuary.

American Wigeon, female

I think she's a Mallard cross; the speculum, blue in "pure" Mallards, is brown.

Correction: female pintail. Thanks, Clare and Rebecca!

Grebe. A diver, not a duck.

Pintail.

And Mallard, being friendly.

Since she was so comfortable with me, I took a good look at her feather patterns:

Neck. The layered look.

Flank and belly.

These two really need to be seen full size. Click on them (left click for new tab) and look closely.

Not quite empty

If I hadn't been so out of shape, we would have missed them. The salmon, that is.

Maybe it would be better to begin at the beginning. This summer has been difficult at times, and we have been forced to stick to easy walking spots, no steep hills nor difficult rock scrambles. But we've been hankering for the cliffs, and finally decided, on Wednesday, that we could handle some stairs. A couple of hundred of them, and then a steep, slippery trail ending in a crawl over rip-rap, to the rocky shore at Kwomais Point.

My legs weren't quite ready for it. By the time we were at the bottom, my knees were wobbly, and I stumbled on the loose rocks at water's edge.

It had been sunny when we set out, but by the time we'd parked at the top of the trail, a heavy mist was rolling in over the sea. At the second lookout, a rock just above the lower treetops, all there was to see was a horizon line dividing grey from blue-grey.

Plus a couple of birds in the distance

Below, we were entranced by the light over the water; the islands in the distance had disappeared, and we took photo after photo of nothing at all, trying to catch the subtle changes of wave and sky.

But the sea wasn't quite empty; as we reached the shore, a flock of surf scoters surfaced. A minute later, they all went under again, fishing. They moved further out, but occasionally we saw them, a sprinkling of black dots, sometimes showing a flash of the white on the back of the head before they vanished again.

And on a rock nearby, a couple of harlequin ducks rested. Near them a few more were diving for supper.

Three female harlequins

Pair of harlequins, male and female.

A distant loon, one of three or four.

And here's where being out of shape comes in. We had a long hike ahead of us, straight up that hill. And my knees were still shaky. I found a handy rock and sat down to rest up, to be ready for the climb. (Not my usual style, at all; there's always another rock I want to turn over, another tidepool to examine.) After a while Laurie joined me, and we sat, looking at the almost empty water.

And then a fish jumped. A big salmon. Another. Another, and another, all in the same small area. They kept it up, leaping high into the air, sometimes straight up, then coming straight down, tail first. Others belly-flopped, sending up great splashes of water.

Something must have been fishing under there, something big. A sea lion, probably. We watched closely. A couple of times I saw something roll partway out of the water, and down again, like the coil of a mythical sea-serpent. No heads of sea lions appeared, though.

We had to get a photo of this! We both sat there on the rock until we were chilled, peering through the viewfinders with the cameras focussed, waiting. We took photos of places where the salmon had jumped a second ago. We were waiting when the salmon jumped off to our left or right. Laurie gave up. I waited for one more. And missed, but not completely.

Salmon splash.

Enough; I was rested, and we climbed up the rocks, the trail, the steps again. At least it's easier on old knees going up.

As soon as my legs stop aching, we'll do it again.

A Skywatch post.