Heron shoes

This is making me laugh every time I walk past.

I bought this wooden heron in a garage sale many years ago, and he has been standing in my garden year round, with his feet in the mud, sheltering slugs. Last year, his feet broke off at the ankles, rotted through. I cut them down a bit, and replaced them in the base.

A couple of weeks ago, his ankles gave out again, and the wood base is rotten, too. He'll need a new one. While I'm finding the right material, I've been touching up his paint job and giving him a few coats of polyurethane.

I cast about for some way to keep him standing while his paint dried and finally found these tarp clamps which fit his legs perfectly, without wobbling.

But he does look strange.

Prosthetic feet?

Or Arabian Nights slippers, curly toesies, and all!

(Maybe I should just paint the new shoes, glue on some beadwork, and call it a day.)

Interim birds

I am feeling seriously bird-deprived. Except for the sandpipers at Crescent Beach the other day and the mallards at Cougar Creek, all the birds we have seen recently have been far, far away, and mostly on their way to distant shores. We keep making plans to go to Reifel Island, but the weather and our schedules keep getting in the way. Maybe this week, as soon as the sun comes out again.

Meanwhile, I've culled a few shots from Laurie's camera, which does distances better than my prime lens. They'll serve as a temtempié* for now.

*(Temtempié, Mexican idiom for "appetizer, snack". A corruption of "tente en pie" = "keep you standing up".)

Eagle, Crescent Beach. In an unusual pose for this tribe; they tend to be just the other side of that trunk, or see, up at the top, that white spot? or soaring over the top of the hill, heading for White Rock.

The one, lonely wigeon at Cougar Creek park this month. His vibrant colours work as camouflage as long as he stays near the shore of the lake.

"After splashdown, an explorer leaves his still-glowing space capsule, unfolds his beak and legs, and takes stock: 'Let's see, there's a big, black, short-legged bird over there, a few white and grey squealers scattered around. Not much else. But it looks like I've landed in a colony of tunnellers; look at all those chimneys! Could be worth my time to stay here.'"

Okay, I'll be sensible.

Robin hiding on us in a maze of bare branches on a misty afternoon. Cougar Creek Park.

And it squirmed all the way down

A heron was fishing on our beach. He was so intent on his prey that he let me sneak up close, and crouch down behind a rock to take photos.

Here he is with one of the gunnels he had for lunch.

At the low tide line

"What do I see there?"

"Caught it!"

Very much alive. And flipping madly.

Flip

Flip

Flip

Between flips, the heron would shake the gunnel violently. I couldn't catch that; the action was too fast, just a blur.

Stunned?

No. It's flipping again.

"Whew! Almost lost it there!"

Getting a better grip. Flip!

Got it by the middle, now.

Sliding the fish up towards the mouth. Still twisting back and forth.

Gulp!

"Ahhhh! That was delicious!"

And he went back to his fishing. He caught three while we watched.

The bush has staring red eyes

Imagine a tangle of half-fallen trees, lichened branches, bedraggled blackberry vines, dead twigs. Like this one:

That's a juvenile black-crowned night heron, out in plain sight. More or less; his feathers blended in with the colour of the branches, and he sat perfectly still. I have upped the contrast, to make him stand out.

We were near the entrance at Reifel Island, when a worker clearing brush pointed these out to us. The young one, and two adults. I couldn't see the adults at first, even when she lined me up to squint down her pointing finger. After a bit of walking back and forth to get different angles, my eyes adjusted and I caught the hint of white feathers behind the screen of branches. It was quite a distance away; I couldn't see the features. The camera did a better job.

Adult black-crowned night heron, Nicticorax nicticorax.

I didn't see the second one until we passed the trees an hour later. Laurie didn't see him at all.

The grey smudges are shadows. Just part of the camouflage.

A closer view of the young one.

This was a first sighting for me. Very exciting!

Characteristics for ID, from USGS;
Adult:

• Red eyes, legs yellow
• Black bill
• Black crown and back
• White face, throat, foreneck, chest and belly
• Blue-gray wings

Juvenile:

• Eyes yellowish to amber, legs dull greyish - check
• Yellow base to bill - I didn't see this.
• Brown head, neck, chest and belly streaked with buff and white - check.
• Wings and back darker brown with large white spots at the tips of the feathers; spots especially large on the greater secondary coverts - check.

Immature:

• First year; similar to juvenile, but with less extensive spotting on upperwings and a dark cap
• Second year; resemble the adult, but have a brown neck and wings contrasting with darker brown cap and back
• Third year; full adult plumage

So this young one is either this year's nestling, or one year old.

And a "Cool Fact" from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology: 

Adult Black-crowned Night-Herons apparently do not distinguish between their own young and those from other nests, and will brood chicks not their own.

They nest in colonies, so there may have been several other herons in the same trees. And the adults we saw may not be the parents of Junior, here.

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Everyone's quiet except the gulls.

I give up. At least, I hereby abandon all attempts at system and order in my vacation blogging.

We are settled down in a motel near Campbell River; nothing fancy, but it suits us. It's shady and quiet, the view is astounding, the neighbours friendly. There's a miniature dog and big spiders and moths (outside). There's plenty to see and do in easy driving range.

We've decided to stay put until Wednesday, then (probably) head home the long way 'round. Every day, we've been going someplace, taking oodles of photos, coming back to the motel, recharging batteries and downloading photos. Then back out again, to take more gazillions of photos. "Home" for supper, and out to see the sunset. Another eleventy-umpteen photos.

I'm barely finding time to discard the fuzzies.

So, until we're back in Delta, I'll post highlights according to my whim of the moment.

The motel is on a cliff looking over Georgia Strait. A staircase (104 steps) leads down to the beach below. These are some of the birds from that beach.

Bonaparte's gull, Larus philadelphia. Black head, black bill is the adult breeding plumage.

"Boney's," again. It rides high in the water, with the wingtips crossed over the tail.

Great blue heron. Two stand on rocks just offshore all day long.

Eagle pretending he's a cormorant.

Gulls feeding in shallow water.

Check out the catch!

The gull in the water came up with a mouthful of starfish. Seconds later, the gull on the rock broke out in loud and bitter recriminations: "That starfish came off my rock! It's mine! You dirty thief!"*

And the "dirty thief" flew happily away. With his stolen lunch.

*(Free translation from the gullish.)

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Distant heron

Livingstone Lake, Van Dusen Gardens:



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Ladner Harbour Park: the itinerary

The other day, Hugh, at Rock, Paper, Lizard, reported on an outing to Ladner Harbour Park; it was lousy with woodpeckers, he said, and the hummingbirds were buzzing over the lagoon. We couldn't resist. Sunday afternoon, we headed down there.

We started at the far end of the sewage lagoon, where the hummingbirds had been. Everything was quiet. No buzzing hummers, no redwing blackbirds, no chattering sparrows, even.

At this time of year, the wetlands are clothed in mud colours; drab browns and greys. There is no softness to the land. Blackberry canes and scratchy shrubs alternate with rustling stands of last year's cattails. Dead grasses sprawl in oozy mud. Kayakers in the waterways provide occasional flashes of colour.

White kayak, yellow jacket

Not a kayak.

Cattail fluff, blowing away

Over the marsh, two hawks patrolled; one, small and elegant, with a white tail, flew in that characteristic "flap-flap-flap, coast, flap-flap-flap, coast" pattern; the other, a large red hawk, sped along in a straight line, making a beeline for somewhere else. When they were gone, a flock of ducks goofed around in the air, going nowhere.

We walked around the lagoon, and passed the "civilized" part of the park, and took the path through the cottonwood forest. And yes, there were woodpeckers.


This flicker was digging a nest hole high in a topless snag. It was deep enough already that he would disappear inside, except for the very tip of a tailfeather. After a few seconds, he backed out, posed, dropped his chip, and dove back inside. We took umpteen photos, all of his silhouette.

A few steps further on, a brown creeper started up a cottonwood just a few feet from us. After the manner of his kind, he spiralled around to the far side the minute we'd got the cameras focussed. Still, we'd seen him, and fairly close-up.

Cottonwoods, far above. Probably lousy with woodpeckers. We heard them.

We took the trail out to the viewing platform at the end of the spit, took the wrong turn at the fork, and ended up on muddy marsh, with a view over the river. Those black spots in the water aren't ducks; they're deadheads. But there's an eagle's nest far across the water.


Then back through the forest behind the office, and on to the road. We followed the road back past the harbour where we saw the mallard hybrids and a fishing heron.

Awkward pose.

Grasses beside the canal.

We never saw the owl, nor its nest. But all the way back along the canal, we were treated to a red-wing blackbird song-fest; the males, busily staking out their territory before the females arrive, and by the sound of it, very pleased with themselves.

And here's a bird we never expected to see in the bush:

Free-range chicken.

And this is for Hugh's collection: this one must have died of old age.

R.I.P.

What else we saw in the park, the green stuff, will wait till tomorrow.

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Quiet afternoon, with background quacking

Before I go on to something else, let me show you the last of the Reifel Island photos:

I love the light in this one. An almost-deserted waterway. The ducks are behind us.


Coot, collecting leftovers after the kids went by. Those feet are far too big; they get in each other's way.


"Nobody's using this nest box; I may as well perch on it."


Unidentified hawk on another nest box. Good thing it's not breeding season yet.


Mallard hybrid. I don't think I've seen this particular mix before.


Great blue heron, fishing.


Scaup females. Greater, I think. Or Lesser. One or the other.


Redwing blackbird. The males arrive here first, then the females about a month later. We'll look for them at the end of February.


Bird feeder. With resident squirrel.


Looking out the window of the warming room. A welcome haven in cold weather, heated by a fragrant wood stove.


On the way home, we stopped to see this eagle guarding his nest.

Next: Stone soup.
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