Is there a duck doctor in the house?

This Northern pintail has a damaged wing. Walking, he drags it on the ground; I didn't see him fly, which may be problematic. Swimming, he's ok.

The wing drags a bit in the water, but he steers fine.

He's fortunate to be at the Centennial Beach duck pond; there is plenty of cover in the reeds, food on the ground and in the water, and good company. Even females and nesting sites. What more could a duck want? (A duck doctor, maybe?)

We've been busy all week with various things, doings good and good-but-no-fun and one no-good-very-sad day, but we did manage the beach today, and the sun broke through the fog a few minutes after we'd ventured out into the grey mist. So kind of it! And we made some exciting finds, too!

Tomorrow's another of those days. This one promises to be a treat, but I may be too exhausted to blog when I get home. See you Monday, at least, then I'll start playing catch-up.

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.

Bird silhouettes on tinted mud

Mud. We dried our boots overnight, and today it took us each an hour to get them clean again. And we had been so careful! But what can you expect when you walk along the shore of a place called "Mud Bay"?

Mud Bay is the inside tip of Boundary Bay. Here, a map might help:

Boundary Bay forms the southern shore of the Fraser Delta. From the tip of the Tsawwassen Peninsula, at Point Roberts (USA), to Kwomais Point across the water, it measures about 13 km. From that same tip to the inner shore, at Mud Bay Station, it's 17 km. (At low tide, it is considerably smaller.)

See that amphipod-like blue-green shape at the top of the bay? That's all mud. And at the interior end, where the Serpentine and the Nicomekl rivers drop silt from the farms of the Fraser Valley, is Mud Bay Station. Here the railway turns to skirt the shoreline on its way to the US, marching straight across a sea of mud to cut the corner. And this is our destination. There are walking and biking paths around the hawk fields, but we are looking for the mud dwellers on the shore.

Boundary Bay is a prime birding spot; Mud Bay may be the best part of it. On this visit, we saw large flocks of red-wing blackbirds (the females have arrived, and they're all singing and chattering at once as they sort out nesting spots among the dry grasses), several great blue herons, a cacophony or two of crows, and a couple of hawks. And that's all before we even got to the shore.

Grey mud, then grey and orange water with birdy sprinkles. Straight ahead, Crescent Beach. It's about 3 PM, but the sun is already low in the southwest.

Most of our photos were silhouettes. These are long-billed dowitchers, and one green-winged teal.

Green-winged teal, much lightened up. I hadn't seen one for years; this time, there were several large flocks.

Long-billed dowitchers. Look closely; the one in front is pulling a worm out of the mud. The little tubes sticking up here and there are worms, too.

Northern pintails, pairing up. The males have the long tail, and the white bib; the females are "normal" ducks.

The railroad trestle bridge across the bay. I liked the way the warm sunlight tinted the mud.

By the way, that's deep stuff. I took one step wrong at the very edge of the rocks, and was immediately up to my ankle in mud. Laurie got stuck the same way for a while; I thought he was going to lose a boot.

On the far side of the tracks, in the dead end of the bay, another large, mixed flock of ducks swam in the river mouth, while dowitchers searched through the mud by the old, rotten fence. Looking closely at our photos, I noticed that most of the pintails sit upright, head high. Almost all the teals in the photos are lying flat, often with their faces in the water.

We usually see gulls and eagles here; only one eagle this time.

Calm before sunset. 

Laurie waiting for me. I was taking photos of coconuts.

Coconuts, again? Tomorrow, tomorrow.

A Skywatch post.

Contortionist

Pintail, preening:

Reifel Island, Monday.

I'll post the rest of our Reifel birds, tomorrow.
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