Wood duck at Reifel Island

It's been a while since we visited Reifel Island Migratory Bird Sanctuary. We remedied that this afternoon, and took, as usual, far too many photos.

Male duck, showing off his colour range.

More photos tomorrow.

Reifel regulars

The second installment of Reifel Island photos, in no particular order:

Coot and his shadow.

I looked up voice recordings of the coot, on All About Birds (Cornell), because I was wondering how to spell the call I hear most often. Surprisingly, they have seven separate recordings, of various squeaks, clicks, and squawks, "krrps" and "priks", but not the note I was looking for; a hollow "glop" sound, sort of like a cork popping out of a wine bottle, or a like a booted foot, stuck in ankle-deep mud, reluctantly released;, a backwards "plop". That doesn't quite do it justice, though; the other calls are grating. This one is almost musical, a nice rounded tone, suddenly being cut off mid-note. Have you heard it? How would you describe it?

Cross-eyed eagle. Not his fault; he had a branch in his eye and I took it out.

Ma Wood Duck, showing off her many petticoats.

"Hurry, hurry! Someone has goodies!"

I am always surprised at the sharp hearing of the ducks. Even against a constant chorus of "Quack, quack, quack, oh quack-quack-quack-quack-QUACK!", as soon as someone a couple of ponds away rustles a bit of paper, ducks from all over drop what they're doing and race to the source. This time, all I had to do to wake up a hundred sleepy mallards was to slowly slide the bag of seeds out of my pocket.

Fat little towhee in a wild cherry tree. Or are those small crabapples?

Three more wood ducks and reflections.

More to come, tomorrow.

Birds in the distance, and a lifer close up.

And returning to the topic at hand ...

The rest of the Reifel Island photos, again, in no particular order. Mostly birds, this time.

Duck and squiggles

Yellowlegs, far in the distance

Cedar waxwing. Love the delicate peach/yellow colouring!

Purple loosestrife, colonizing an islet

Yellow-green water, island with posing heron.

Ducklings

Duckling scratching his belly. How does he get himself so twisty?

Unidentified duck

Manky mallard, maybe?

Towhee, just out of the overhang of the blackberry canes.

Lbb and blackberries. The red one has been nibbled on. I think he has some in his beak.

Little green apple

Young wood duck in the mud at the edge of the slough. A lifer!

One more day, and we're on the road north!

Reifel Island sampler

Vacation coming up! If all goes as planned, we'll be leaving for a week in Campbell River early Tuesday morning. We're halfway packed, most of our errands run, food ready, reservations made. And here I am, trying to clear my desktop for all the photos we'll be taking, and I'm soooo far behind.

The 27th of last month, we were in Reifel Island. It was a great day; hardly anyone about, and the two- and many-legged residents were happily going about their business. I even saw a tiny, furry, flattish mouse-sized critter. Not a mouse, a shrew, mole, something of that sort; he was gone before I got a good look.

What else? Here, in no particular order, are some birds, some bugs, some plants:

An X of pigeons.

Wood duck female

Thistle going to seed

Twin berry. I like those red frilly "collars".

Patient heron

Green Douglas fir cones. Those little white blobs on the twig at lower left are balls of fluff. I noticed them on the needles of our Douglas firs at home, too. Must investigate.

The dock is really red this year.

Little daisies and a blue, blue fly

Having heard the rustle of a goody bag, the geese come from the far side of the pond, queueing up on the way.

Quiet trails and a lonely bench; sleepy ducks and a strolling sandhill crane

Sandhill tail feathers, each one different.

A mound of mini-daisies

Bee or bee mimic? Coated with snowy thistle pollen.

Thistles without bees.

There are too many for one post; I'll post the other half shortly.

Shy show-offs

Wood ducks are cavity nesters. They're cautious birds; they choose well-hidden holes, high in old-growth trees, where they can incubate their eggs out of the reach and sight (mostly) of predators. Since we've cut down the old forests, it's a good thing that they easily accept our substitutes. In the central aisles of Reifel Island Bird Sanctuary, where the trees provide good cover, the staff has put up nest boxes for them. These are easily identified; they're big boxes, at least 2 feet tall, surrounded by foliage, high in the trees beside the water.

This weekend we saw several pairs hanging out near their selected boxes.

The male has dramatic red eyes.

And the female wears white eye liner.

"Hurry, hurry!"

Against the light, they make a striking silhouette.

Couples pair up in January, begin nesting from February to March, and the chicks hatch after about 30 days. Then they jump from these high nests to the ground, and head for the water on foot. A freshly-hatched wood duck ducking can jump almost 90 metres without injury!

We should be seeing families in a few weeks.

No privacy these days. Might as well be on Facebook.

Wood ducks are shy creatures. We turned down a sheltered path on Reifel Island, surprising a gaudy male; he slid off into the water, turned a corner and disappeared before we had taken a half-dozen steps. Laurie, coming around the back way, snuck up on him and caught him floating motionless in the shadow of the bushes.

Later, from a trail like a green tunnel, where we were the ones hidden from view, we watched the action across the water:

Mr. Wood.

There's a wood duck in there somewhere.

A bit of body-building exercise. Flap, flap, flap.

Now a refreshing shower.

Shaking the water out of his coat.

Check the mirror. Everything in order? Hat on straight? Ready to go, then.

Waiting for her guy.

Dinner date, maybe.

Stained-glass feathers

We came around a bend in the trail at Reifel Island just in time to catch this pair of wood ducks out in the open.

Wood ducks, female (left) and male.

They're shy birds; before we got a chance at a second shot, they had scooted down the bank and into the water. They came back, partway, when I tossed a few handfuls of seed in their direction. The lighting was bad; we were in shadow, pointing into the light. Imagine these colours, but shining as though with an interior light.

Blues and greens on the male's back.

I always thought the female was drab, but here, in breeding costume, she is in no way eclipsed by her gaudy mate.