Where: Reifel Bird Sanctuary (Delta), Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake (Burnaby)
Weather: Mostly cloudy, some drizzle, 5-7°C
The Outing
Reifel Bird Sanctuary
The last time I was at Reifel was September 21. It was still summer! Last time it got to 19C. It was 5C when we arrived this morning, “but feels like 2C” as per the weather app. I renewed my yearly membership, more than a month after it had expired. This is why you don’t renew early on memberships affected by weather.
Since my camera decided to shuffle off its electronic coil, Nic generously loaned me his old camera, a Sony A7iii. The biggest difference is, well, it’s bigger. It’s a full-frame camera, but worked similarly enough to mine that only minor adjustments were needed. I only needed five shots to actually learn how focus was set up.
After that, I had a few fuzzy shots that I blame myself on, but also a lot of very nice shots. I had trouble with birds walking or swimming by, with motion blue or just plain old blur in most shots, something I generally didn’t find with my camera. I will experiment, while pondering what to do with my old and currently mostly-dead camera.
We quickly found at Reifel that it is now All Birds Love You season, as towhees and chickadees were bopping all over the place and being downright friendly, hoping we were carrying caches of seed. I’m pretty sure we had mallards occasionally following us.
Reifel actually had a surplus of both sparrows and waterfowl, though some that we rarely see there, like common mergansers and cormorants, were far off in one of the sloughs. A guy mentioned a green heron in one of the inner waterways, but we never saw it. We did accidentally spook a couple of great blue herons, though. Whoops!
Most of the winter migrants have arrived, though a few, like the ring-necked ducks, are still relatively few in number. Shovellers are starting their annual takeover, showing up pretty much all over the sanctuary, while the Canad geese vacated the place entirely. Instead of their constant honks, we got the adorable peeps of wigeons.
Piper Spit
After lunch, we went to Piper Spit, and despite a relatively low water level (the land mass by the pier is quite large now), there were no shorebirds to be seen. We did see lots of gulls, which had largely claimed the land (when they were not pecking away at the dead salmon), plus mallards. Lots and lots of mallards. There were geese here, but only a handful, assuming you had giant goose-holding hands. They were quiet.
The wood ducks put on a good show and I got some spiffy shots of them. My attempt at capturing gulls in flight was no better with Nic’s camera than with mine, so I’m going to chalk that up to me not taking the time to shoot these kinds of shots properly. I am a lazy photographer.
Also, with the weather cool and dreary, we often had the entire pier to ourselves. I felt special! And the camera worked the whole time, which also felt special!
In all, a good outing.
The Shots
Soon™
The Birds (and other critters). Rare, rarely-seen or recently returned birds highlighted in bold.
Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:
- Anna’s hummingbird
- Black-capped chickadee
- Dark-eyed junco
- Fox sparrow
- Golden-crowned sparrow
- House sparrow
- Red-winged blackbird
- Song sparrow
- Spotted towhee
Waterfowl and shorebirds:
- American coot
- American wigeon
- Canada goose
- Common merganser
- Double-crested cormorant
- Great blue heron
- Green-winged teal
- Hooded merganser
- Mallard
- Northern pintail
- Northern shoveller
- Ring-necked duck
- Sandhill crane
- Scaup
- Trumpeter swan
- Wood duck
Common:
- American crow
- Rock pigeon
- Assorted gulls
Raptors:
- Northern harrier
Non-birds:
- Black squirrels
