Peaceful

The first of February. A sparkling day at Oyster Bay. And there were green-winged teals!.

High tide. Inside the breakwater, there's barely a ripple.

Green-winged teal male in breeding garb.

Courtship starts in the fall and peaks in January and February; they choose new partners each year. (All About Birds)

Against the light

Male and female.

Speeding right along, leaving an expanding wake.

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El primero de febrero. Un dia brillante en la bahía, y con patos serranos, Anas carolinensis, vestidos para impresionar. Es la temporada cuando están escogiendo su pareja para este año.

Fotos:

1. Oyster Bay, con la marea alta. Protegida por el rompeolas, el agua apenas se mueve.
2. Un pato macho. Se conocen por la cabeza rojiza, con su franja verde y una linea blanca bajo el ojo. Las hembras y los patos jóvenes son vienen en colores pardo y crema.
3. Contra la luz.
4. Macho y hembra
5. Un macho distante, navegando rapidamente; deja una estela tras si.

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.

Is he, or isn't he?

I give up! Are these green-winged teals, or hybrids?

Male. He seems to have misplaced his white shoulder stripe.

The couple. She is showing just a tip of the green speculum.

They're the right size; quite a bit smaller than the mallards. And in the right place; they winter here. But where's the stripe?

Reifel Island, last week.

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.