Birds on the rocks

Rocky shore, with a few distant birds.

See him?

Getting closer.

It took over 15 minutes to get close enough, stepping softly. One slow step more, and he flew away. A Belted  kingfisher, male.

Bald eagle.

Gull on a rock. Quadra Island across the water.

Peep. I think it's a plover.

At least these were close.  Peep tracks.

More tomorrow, not quite so far away.

A Skywatch post.

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 Una playa con rocas. Y pájaros en la distancia.

1. ¿Lo ves?
2. Me estoy acercando.
3. Me tomó más de 15 minutos llegar tan cerca, caminando despacito para no asustarle. Un paso más, y voló. Un martín gigante, Megaceryle alcyon, macho.
4. Un águila calva, Haliaeetus leucocephalus.
5. Una gaviota sobre una roca, con la isla Quadra en el fondo.
6. Un pájaro playero pequeño ("peep"). Creo que es un chorlito gris, Pluvialis squatarola.
7. Por lo menos, estas huellas las pude ver de cerca. Huellas de algún "peep".

Birding at a distance

It was a day for small birds, birds that usually are hidden behind the leaves. And for a few big birds, 'way off in the distance, so they were essentially little birds, according to my eyes and camera.

A kingfisher! Not only did he park not too far away, but he stayed there while I took enough photos to get one more or less in focus.

A young robin, all speckly.

Zooming in on him. It's 8 below zero, Celsius. How these tiny critters keep from freezing is a never-ending wonder. I'm wearing long johns, layers of warm clothes, gloves, a tuque and a hood and I'm still cold.

A little green-winged teal. Poor photo, but I'm glad I got it; I haven't seen one of these for several years.

A sparrow on the frozen path beside the river.

Usually the little brown birds flit around in the undergrowth; on this frozen afternoon, sparrows and robins and towhees came out to the path, where the sunshine sort of softened the frozen ground.

One of a flock of golden-crowned sparrows.

And the bigger birds, looking small:

Mallards sleeping in the sun. The white stuff on the island behind them is ice.

An eagle, as I usually see them; a white spot at the top of an evergreen.

Birds, birds, birds. All too far away. Right to left: a flying duck, a bufflehead, several small flocks of diving ducks, probably buffleheads, a Cessna, and an eagle. And what looks like two waiters on stilts carrying trays of goodies.

Photos I took that wouldn't even have qualified for the Worst Bird Photograph page: a V of honking Canada geese, towhees against the light, and a pair of diving common mergansers, another bird I haven't been seeing for some time.

Volunteer planter

An ancient piling at Oyster Bay, unused now for many decades, enjoys a second useful life as a tall planter.

Young alder growing high above the bay.

A kingfisher uses this piling as a perch from which he can watch for small fish. It's at the end of the sea wall, and the only approaches are in plain sight from a good distance away. I tried once to sneak up on him, doing my old tree impersonation after every couple of steps. When I was halfway to camera range, he up and left.

I'll try again.

Blue, so blue

Water pics. The view from our shores.

Brown's Bay, the marina and restaurant, with the tide coming in.

Reflections, Brown's Bay marina.

Rocks and blues. The view from the boat launch south of Willow Point, where I collect water for my aquarium.

An older photo, from the same location, in mid-winter.

"There's a kingfisher on the piling," a man told me. "Go on up close; he won't be spooked." He was. Oyster Bay.

Kingfisher

Near the rivers and lakes, I often hear kingfishers. Sometimes, I even see them before they've darted out of sight.  Only twice in all these years have I managed to aim the camera at one. This was the third time, and he perched on a branch for a few seconds, before he plunged into the river.

And he's actually in focus!

He's a male belted kingfisher, fishing in the Gold River.

Calm

After a difficult week, plagued with griefs both personal and public, I spent this afternoon sitting in deep woods, watching a creek and a kingfisher. Life goes on.

Creek off the Quinsam River. The kingfisher is there, but invisible.

Baikie Island, off-season

There is a sign near the entry to Baikie Island. A small rectangle, bashed, stained, and bent, on the street sign post. The street appears to be a lane through a construction company's storage area; gravelled, pot-holed, curving between stacks of pallets, old machinery, huge rusting tanks. I'd been down there before, searching for a way to the river bank, and gave up, feeling as if I were intruding. But I persisted this time, and at the end there's a parking spot, and two big parks' board signs.

It was raining when I parked, but not too heavily. I grabbed my pocket camera and headed down the main trail, hiding the camera under my jacket to keep the rain off.

"The Mill Pond Now". Not quite. The Mill Pond as it is in the summer. On the back side of the sign is the mill pond, before the restoration. Not pretty.

A bridge leading onto the island provides a view of the pond. On the far side, mallards slept in the rain; out in the water, buffleheads, coots, and goldeneyes were diving. Chickadees and other small birds poked around in the wet grasses.

The island still has a few signs of its industrial past; bits of metal and plastic embedded in the soil, a roll of rubber sheeting, a log ramp of sorts at the outer edge. And many old, greasy, mangled, and blackened snags and stumps, left as is, standing out against the wet greenery.

Tortured wood

There were several stumps inverted and jammed into the ground like this, with the roots upward and grass growing on top. I'm having trouble imagining why.

At the far end, there's a small beach. A mere stone's throw away, on the other side of the channel, there's the exiled machinery, piled high on the shore.

A large, rusty ramp, big enough for loaded logging trucks. And on the tip, a belted kingfisher. Treetop or ramp; whatever gives a good view of the fish in the water is ok with her.

Female belted kingfisher. The male doesn't have the rusty belt.

Callling, calling. She kept this up as long as I was in hearing distance.

Her rattle fitted right in with the industrial setting; she sounded like metal cables grating on their pulleys as they unwind. (Listen: Cornell All About Birds)

View from the tip. With raindrops on the water.

I was wet and cold, and worried about the rain on the camera. I hurried back to the car, but I'll be back, when the sun shines.

Baker's dozen

Even with this October's uninspiring weather, photos accumulate in my files.  I've been tidying up. These are random shots from White Rock and Boundary Bay, in no particular order:

Gull, White Rock

Watching the coal train wall off the beach

White Rock tracks

Reflections, duck pond, Centennial Park. Laurie gets me to throw in stones to tangle up the shadows.

Laurie says he took this one by mistake. But I like it. Upper beach, Boundary Bay.

Red, yellow, green and brown.

I was taking photos of mallards in the shade at the duck pond, and I disturbed this kingfisher. He scolded bitterly as he flew to this dead tree, out of my camera's range . . .

 

... but not quite beyond Laurie's.

Texture on drift log, White Rock

Peeking.

On a driftwood log, there were two of these brown and orange fungi, standing out against the silvery sand and wood.

Stump, Centennial Park. With a heart-shaped hole, for Clytie.

White Rock, the last sunny day, with a smelt fisherman and 7 paddle-boarders.

More tomorrow. Gotta catch up!

Very bad, very blurry, wonderful photos

I'm not very good with binoculars. I get lost; I go branch to branch on the tree where I just saw that bird, always on the wrong branch. And when I find the target and start to zoom in on it, my hand shakes and ... I begin again.

Once I discovered the auto-focus mode of my first digital camera, the bins got left at home. Now I zoom in, watching the whole scene on my screen, then halfway depress the shutter button, and -- Aha! A cormorant! Or another crow having an argument with an eagle!

Sometimes, though, I zoom as far as the camera will go, focus, and say, "I don't know. A seagull, maybe. Or a fishing boat float?" If I'm curious enough, I'll take the photo anyway, and see if I can clear it up at home.

I delete zillions of photos of unidentifiable birds. Or maybe fishing boat floats.

And occasionally, I discover a bird I had seen, and yet not seen. A lifer, even. This past week, there were two. And one that didn't show up.

Far away, at water's edge off Semiahmoo Reserve, (White Rock area), we saw a line of black and white specks; they turned out to be (probably) Caspian terns. First time I'd seen these and knew it.

Sterna caspia

They are definitely terns, but conceivably could be another species. The Caspians are occasional visitors to this area, are about the size of a medium seagull, have a black cap and large red bill. The photo in my Audubon Field Guide shows black legs; other terns have orange legs. And the Caspian has a slight crest on the head; in my photo, the "caps" often seem peaked towards the back. The Audubon's photo shows a black tip on the bill, but the write-up does not mention it. I can't see one on any of these birds.

At the western end of the White Rock beach, near Kwomais Point, three bumps slept on a rock. They turned out to be Harlequin ducks.

Harlequins, two males and one female.

At this distance, the colours (slate blue and chestnut) are almost gone, but we identified them by the white markings; the faces are hidden under the wings, but the strong "V" at the neck is plainly visible, as is the bold stripe across the shoulder area. Another first for me.

By the way, their Latin name is Histrionicus histrionicus. Meaning a double show-off?

The Harlequin Duck takes its name from Arlecchino, Harlequin in French, a colourfully dressed character in Commedia dell'arte. The species name comes from the Latin word "histrio", "actor". Wikipedia

This next was not a stranger, nor a surprise; we heard him calling long before we saw him. But all we could see was a silhouette against the sky. A very odd silhouette.

A kingfisher, Ceryle alcyon.

Bad hair day.

And last, a sparrow. Another silhouette, lightened up and cleared of a rainbow effect from shooting directly into the sunlight. He was singing so beautifully that he deserved his 15 minutes of fame.


He can stand in for the flock of swallows we were trying to photograph. Impossible! They were in a narrow ravine, cutting down the cliff by Kwomais point, and had made burrows in a tall clay cliff. We could see the holes that they went into and out of, the swallows swooping around, up, down, across the ravine, zipping into the holes again. It was a good place for them; protected, out of reach of all but the most ambitious teenagers (who had carved their initials into the lower part of the cliff), and, with a trickling stream at the bottom, home to a cloud of gnats.

We took many photos of the cliff face. No swallows appeared in them, not even shadows of swallows. And the nest holes were indistinguishable from the dents and flakes on the wall.

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