Sometimes things just go right

Whatever the weather; rain, gumbootrain, or raingearrain; we were going to get out of the house. So we promised ourselves Monday night. "It'll be fun!" I said. So when Tuesday dawned with no rain, even a hint of sunshine, we were pleased, and maybe a bit relieved.

Still, we carried our rain capes and umbrellas, just in case; you can never trust BC weather to live up to its promises.

A weekday, a grey day sandwiched between rainy ones; nobody else would be at Reifel Island. A good day for birding. And the sightings started long before we got there, too.

Immature bald eagles in Delta farm land

These eagles looked odd to me. I thought they just might be young goldens. Something about the shape of the head, or maybe the beak, the sleekness of the feathers, the golden crown ... Here's a cropped and enlarged view:

So I spent a few hours looking them up, and finally decided that yes, they are immature bald eagles after all. The distinguishing mark is the leg; the immature golden has feathers right down to the toes.

Coming in for a landing

We stopped, as usual, at Westham Island bridge. There's an eagles' nest high in a tree just across the street, in use this year again. One eagle was standing guard, half hidden behind branches. Above him, unheeding, a flock of starlings perched, occasionally bouncing off to wheel and land again. The eagle took no notice of them.

Below the bridge, a flock of mallards and wigeons dawdled in the shallows. A coot and a grebe were diving for fish. Camouflaged against the patterns of brown mud and grasses, ...

Look at the length of those bills!

... dozens of peeps slept. A few were wading; otherwise we wouldn't have seen the flock at all.

I have almost as much trouble with these as I do with sparrows; they could be anything from yellowlegs to dowitchers.

Pretty, whatever they are.

And these, I am almost sure, are green-winged teal, judging by the couple of green heads I can see, and the vertical white bar just in front of the wing. I don't know what the dark brown duck is.

And there were mute swans!

So elegant!

I love the contrast here; the sharp blades of grass, the broken sticks, and the white softness of the swan. And that downy head!  It makes you want to touch it. (But I wouldn't dare; I want to keep my fingers.)

Curves

And going from the sublime to the spiky, a heron hiding on the bank of an irrigation ditch.

Armed and dangerous

On to Reifel! (And it still wasn't raining. Fingers crossed ...)

More tomorrow...

Invading the privacy of eagles

It's rare that the eagles we see ever take notice of us. And why would they? We're beneath them (literally), earth-crawlers, slow-pokes, bound to our little trails and roadways.

So this trio surprised us.

In our program of gradually moving north on the Boundary Bay - Mud Bay dike trail, we had driven as far as we could go on Tsawwassen streets and parked at Beach Grove Park, with the intent of taking one of the many little alley-ways to the beach. (See map.) Instead, we crossed the park and followed a narrow trail into the trees, hoping to hit the shore in that direction.

In this area, most of the trees are cottonwoods, and many of the largest had been sawed off, leaving tall snags. (They tend to fall over easily when they get too big, so cutting them is wise in populated areas.) A sign explained that the dead stumps had been left for food, perches and nesting for the local birds. Near the top of one of the tallest, I saw a large eagle's nest. No eagles, though.

Our trail petered out at a bit of a creek, too deep for our shoes. We back-tracked and found a way around the wood, at the edge of the farmland. A few birds called in the bush, but otherwise we were alone. Ahead of us, we saw the dike across a plowed field; it was fenced, so we had to turn south again, back towards the street.

We had worked our way about half-way down the sea-ward side of the wood, when we heard a loud, indignant-sounding "Squawk!" I looked up, and there was a young eagle directly overhead. On more distant branches two mature eagles sat silently, ignoring us, as they do.

Of course, we both started madly snapping photos, walking slowly towards the base of the trees. When we got too close, all three rose into the air and flew away. A couple more clicks of the shutter, and they were out of range.

Here are the closest two, one adult, one "kid":

Laurie got an excellent shot of the young one, flying directly overhead. If you look closely, you can see how he was turning his head to look down at these rude intruders. Click on the photo; enlarged, you can even see the pupil of his eye.

We walked on, and the eagles returned to the roosts where we had first seen them. But when we got back to the road (through a narrow gap in the fence), I looked back again. Not a sign of them, nor of the big nest. They had chosen their spots carefully, where they could not be seen from anywhere along the street. No wonder the young one was perturbed when we "snuck around" from the fields.