Where: Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake (Burnaby) Weather: Cloudy, some sun, 9°C
Piper spit
The lake level is still high, the lily pads still submerged, but let’s check back in a month.
Today’s trek was a bit shorter than usual due to a late start and me not feeling entirely skookum in the morning. I walked to Burnaby Lake, and we then walked from Cariboo Dam to Piper spit and to our delight, there were birbs on the way, specifically black-capped chickadees and plenty of ’em. We also saw some towhees, as well as various sparrows, which was a lot more than the last trip here.
We also saw the titular bunny, but it didn’t stay around long, due to a couple of people walking close by it. I got several lousy shots, though! (I did better with the chickadees.)
In another sign of spring, skunk cabbage is starting to pop up in the marshy spots alongside the trails. It isn’t quite to the point where it earns its name, but that will happen soon™.
At the spit, the better-than-forecast weather meant there were a fair number of people, but it was fine. The people were much better behaved than the waterfowl, who were rather nippy with each other. Several geese went full-on berserk. Spring fever, perhaps.
And I almost got a decent shot of a gull in flight. Almost. Maybe I’ll just focus on them for a bit one time and adjust settings to better capture them in the air.
I did get more good shots of some crows. Yeah, they’re just crows, but in the right light (which I got today) you can see a ton of detail in their feathers, rather than it all just being a spooky black blur. And I enjoy taking shots of “ordinary” birds, always hoping to catch them doing something weird.
In all, it was a fine outing, even if it was a bit more compact than usual. The only thing I really missed was getting a shot of a squirrel being adorable. Maybe next time, when I show up completely covered in nuts.
Side note: Efforts to revive my old one have failed, so I am tottes looking for a replacement now. I did discover the camera still shoots and records video, though, so I could still use it to become a world-famous vlogger.
Where: Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake (Burnaby), Tlahutum Regional Park (Coquitlam) Weather: Party sunny, some showers, bonus hail, 7°C
Piper spit
A goose on the field near Cariboo Dam, suspicious of me taking its photo.
With a narrow window of possibly decent weather, we decided to do a quick afternoon of birding at Piper Spit and take our chances. The weather held for the most part, with the sun poking out at times, though we did get the occasional and rather brief cloudburst (literally, ten seconds of rain, then it would stop). As we crossed over the dam upon exiting, it got fun with hail as well.
But despite the lack of song birds (I managed to catch all of one song sparrow), the waterfowl were still out in force, with the lake level higher and the land mass east of the pier temporarily reduced to two small islands, which the crows and gulls seemed to be fighting over. The shorebirds were gone, departed to other shallows.
Even the blackbirds seemed to be mostly hidden, with bunches chattering in the trees, but mostly out of sight.
The usual gang were out in abundance, though a lot were acting a bit snippy, with lots of tail biting and such (hence the title, because ducks don’t care about you if you’re in their section of the lake). Several geese were acting berserk, which is almost comforting in these troubling times.
It was Sunday, so the number of people shouldn’t have been a surprise, but still, it surprised me. Most started clearing out mid-afternoon when it seemed clear (ho ho) that the weather was shifting.
And we got treated to a Douglas squirrel being adorable, so in the end it was fine overall.
Tlahutum Regional Park
Coquitlam River, looking dark ‘n moody.
We skipped the community garden and a glance later confirmed ponds a-plenty throughout, so it would not have been easy to navigate without getting into the muck. Plus, the flowerbeds are still too fallow to be attracting birbs.
The waterways along the trails did yield a few species we didn’t see at Piper Spit, namely some gadwalls and, somewhat unusually (for us), a pair of grebes.
It was rather brisk, though. Every shot I took looks cold. The bridge over the Coquitlam River had shiny new planks, though. Well, they weren’t shiny, because they’re wood, but they had that fresh wood look to them.
In all, a shortish trip to Tlahutum, but not a bad one. The weather was again a bit erratic, starting out quite decent (the rains in Burnaby missed the area) but turning dark ‘n moody as the afternoon progressed. Still, we mostly dodged the rain again.
Overall, not bad for a truncated outing, but I’m looking forward to it being a bit greener, a bit warmer and a bit drier.
The Shots
Theoretically possible
The Birds (and other critters)
Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:
American robin
Black-capped chickadee
Dark-eyed Junco (I saw some en route to Burnaby Lake, so I’m counting them)
Where: Reifel Bird Sanctuary (Delta), Everett Crowley Park (Vancouver), Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake (Burnaby) Weather: Sun and high cloud, 7-14°C
The Outing
Reifel Bird Sanctuary
Moodly-looking marshland.
I missed the snow at Reifel in the sense that I was not there when the snow was. I did not otherwise miss it. Today it was mostly sunny and quite mild, with temperatures well above normal and little to no wind.
We didn’t have to go far to find the Sandhill cranes, as three of them milled around us right at the entrance. A sad note here, as one of the nearly adult-size babbies disappeared a few weeks and has not been seen, despite park volunteers looking for it, or signs of it. The others were wandering about in that nonchalant way of theirs. We also had our best view of the night heron, which was still not great.
The great blue heron were mostly seen from a distance, and one of their usual spots in the slough near the entrance had been taken over by the largest gathering of turtles I’ve seen there, spread out among the logs and basking in the sun.
After shooting the cranes, we headed up the East Dyke trail and saw a large blob of people ahead, gathered in the area where owls have been spotted. They had spotted an owl, specifically an adorable little Northern saw-whet owl (less adorable if you’re a vole or field mouse). Even better, I got probably my best owl shots ever, which is admittedly not a high bar, since almost all of my previous shots ranged from bad to “I swear there’s an owl there.”
Chickadees were in short supply, which seemed odd, but we did see a few wood ducks, the geese had returned and honked regularly to remind you they had done so. Towhees were once again out in large numbers. No sign of any spring migrants yet.
And eagles. Everywhere we saw eagles, flying in circles in groups of about six to eight, all over the place. Maybe a social thing? It was a good way to test the strength of my arms, as to get shots I had to point the camera straight up at the sky. The shots I got were okay, but Nic fared a bit better.
I got my first-ever shots of a trio of hummingbirds at one feeder, all drinking instead of fighting. Some of the shots were pretty decent, woo.
Reifel was also quite busy, which was not surprising given how mild it was. Overall, it felt like we moved through more quickly than usual, but we both got good shots, so that was OK.
Everett Crowley Park
Avalon Pond, where a few ducks were hanging out.
This was a new place for us and a rare bit of birding in Vancouver proper. The park is nice enough and has nice, wide trails and a cute little pond called Avalon Pond, where we saw a few mallards. However, many of the trails are off-leash for dogs and this is obviously a very popular spot for dog walkers, which is not great for birding, as birds and dogs do not normally act like best buds together. We did see a junco and a few robins, and one song sparrow. BUT…one of the robins was leucistic up in the hizzy, with a lot of white all over parts of its body that are normally not white, giving it a distinctive and snazzy look. This pretty much made the trip worthwhile. That said, we probably won’t come back, due to the dogs.
There were signs noting that No nuisance barking was allowed. I wonder where the line is between acceptable and nuisance barking is?
Also, it doesn’t state who shouldn’t dig, so I assume the rule applies to both dogs and people. Several large holes indicated this rule was not always being observed.
Barking your shin is allowed, but not recommended.
Piper Spit
View from Piper Spit, looking east.
The sun had mostly disappeared between high clouds at Piper Spit, which made us sad, and our trip to the rowing pavilion yielded no birds other than pigeons, though we did get some scenery shots.
At the spit itself, the usual gang was there, including a gull that was very proud of the golf ball it had procured. There was duck drama, but the coots seemed relatively well-behaved. The geese were honking and being weird and one on the pier got nippy, and also started showing its tongue, which is something you should never see or ever want to see.
In good news, the dowitchers were back. In less good news, they were on the west side of the pier, which is bad from a lighting perspective. Nothing some post-processing magic can’t fix, I suppose.
There were also quite a few people here, many holding out their hands to feed the blackbirds and one person bravely risking all of her fingers by letting a goose eat from her hand. I would only do this while wearing industrial gloves. And a welding mask.
In all, a nice mix of old and new, with perfectly pleasant weather that beat the ice and snow of our last outing a few weeks back.
The Shots
Soon?™
The Birds (and other critters). Rare or rarely-seen birds highlighted in bold.
Where: Green Timbers Urban Forest Park (Surrey), Tlahutum Regional Park (Coquitlam), Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake (Burnaby) Weather: Sunny, 0-3°C
The Outing
Green Timbers Urban Forest Park
Green Timbers Lake: Frozen and mostly duckless.
We started out a brisk weekday birding at Green Timbers, which we haven’t been to since November 2023.
It was cold, as expected, and the trails were snow-covered, also as expected, but they were also very icy in areas, which for some reason I did not expect. We were careful, though, and stayed upright the entire time.
In terms of scenery, we got good shots of the frozen lake and environs, but birds were scarce–a few mallards gingerly walking on the ice, a fox sparrow, a few song sparrows and an elusive Bewick’s wren made up most of what we saw. to be fair, only one tiny portion of the lake was not frozen (we even saw someone skating on it, despite the THIN ICE signs).
With not much to see, we moved on, this time electing to skip the sham known as Big Hill.
Tlahutum Regional Park
A snowy field. We actually didn’t get much farther than this today.
We gambled on Tlahutum next, hoping we might see something in the community garden (negative, other than a lot of snow covering everything), though I did spot one towhee (see what I did there?) We consoled ourselves with getting some nice shots of the wintry Coquitlam River, except they are replacing the bridge deck Monday to Friday, which includes Wednesday, which is today, so we couldn’t get onto or across the brisge. Thus ended our trip here.
Piper Spit
Just some of the dozens of gulls at Piper Spit, plus a crow.
Moving on to Piper Spit, we saw lots of actual birds to go with the frozen scenery. That was nice.
What was not as nice was me taking all of two shots before a bird pooped on my left shoulder. I had to go to the washroom to de-poop my hoodie, return, have Nic point out poop I missed (the washrooms there have no mirrors), de-poop a second time, then return to the spit and hope all pooping on me was done for this visit (it was).
A few species were especially plentiful today: crows in ever-increasing numbers, as they seem to be adopting the area as a stopping point on their trip to their nightly roost not too far away, gulls by the dozen, spread out over the land mass and further onto the frozen part of the lake, and, curiously, a lot of green-winged teals.
There was coot drama, gull drama, crow and gull drama (one gull had parked itself on the ice near some kind of crumbly human food, and a crow came up, yoinked on the gull’s tail, and the gull decided to just let the crow have the goods). The geese once again honked and took off to parts elsewhere.
The highlight (?) may have been two pigeons on the pier, who were very into each other, pursuing passionate pigeon play, with the male grooming the female copiously before, uh, following up with the rest. You could almost see the cigarettes being smoked afterward.
And of course, as usual, the gulls were pulling everything they could find out of the water, including pine cones, what appeared to be a yellow cloth that totally intrigued one gull, and something we could only determine might have been organic. No golf balls this time, though.
We both got some nice shots, including some very nice sparrow shots at Green Timbers, which was a pleasant surprise, given the scarcity of birbs there. And despite the cold, it never felt that cold. Overall, a perfectly pleasant outing.
I’m ready for the next one to have no snow, though.
The Shots
Soon?™
The Birds (and other critters). Rare or rarely-seen birds highlighted in bold.
Where: Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake (Burnaby) Weather: Partly sunny, 2-3°C
The Outing
Piper Spit
Gulls, coots and chilly temperatures at Burnaby Lake.
The weather for today was predicted to be a cold mix of snow and rain, with a possible break in the early afternoon, so we opted to go to the lake around 2 p.m. and see what the ducks were up to.
There was duck drama. And coot drama. The geese just plain flew off and left the whole thing.
But despite the chilly temperatures, the weather actually turned out to be surprisingly decent, with the sun even poking out (note the bits of blue sky in the above photo), so we got in plenty of shots. We didn’t see any particularly unusual birds, like buffleheads, but there were plenty of the usual winter migrants swimming and flapping and bathing. The gulls were busy pulling up eldritch horrors from the water, or grabbing golf balls and being chased by crows.
Oh, and juncos. The entrance to the spit was festooned with juncos, along with copious towhees and others. But if you were in the mood for juncos, you got all you could want and more.
In all, a fine, if shorter outing.
The Shots
Soon?™
The Birds (and other critters). Rare or rarely-seen birds highlighted in bold.
Some of the feeders, squirrel gorging at the central one.
The nice thing about Richmond Nature House is the birds gather nicely together for you, thanks to a bunch of feeders arranged behind a fence just north of the house itself. It’s like a birding buffet.
Despite the cooler temperatures, there was no wind here, so it felt fine. As before, juncos were very well-represented, and towhees were also rather abundant. We did see a nuthatch, but it didn’t stay around long, though a hairy woodpecker gave us plenty of opportunity for photos. Squirrels of various types were back gorging themselves in the feeders and even the rat was back, nibbling at seeds on the ground with its creepy yet cute forepaws, which kind of look like little human hands.
A number of Anna’s hummingbirds were present, too, and I actually got some decent shots of them in flight (albeit with blurred wings, since I was letting the camera do all the heavy lifting).
In all, we got a very nice set of birb photos here.
Iona Beach
Shot as we were leaving, with the tide starting to go out. The foam at the bottom-right is frozen.
I wasn’t expecting to see a lot of birds at Iona, and the wind picked up, so it was a tad cold. The tide was also in, which meant the opportunities for seeing shorebirds was greatly reduced–or so we thought!
There were a bunch of herons ringing the main pond, like silent stabby sentinels. Unfortunately, most were a little too far away, but at least they don’t jump all over the place when you’re shooting them.
Our trek past the pond and through the wooded area yielded no birds, but we did see a pair of bald eagles land on a log boom as we swung by the river. Further up were a trio of cormorants resting on some pilings, along with some gadwalls and wigeons (to be clear, the gadwalls and wigeons were not on the pilings with the cormorants, though that would have made for some very interesting shots).
There was also a crow standing on top of a sign, acting very dramatic. We took pictures, it seemed satisfied, then flew off.
Just before heading out, we saw a very round song sparrow, which are probably the birbiest of birbs around here. We thought we were done, but as we started driving off, we saw the tide was now beginning to go out and lo, there were shorebirds!
We got some shots of dunlins and killdeer tooling around along the shore, as well as a look at probably hundreds of pintails gathered in one of the ponds adjacent to the sewer/water plant. Most were snoozing. Presumably it doesn’t smell that bad in there. Or pintails have a lousy sense of smell.
The biggest surprise, though, was an area of bushes and trees along the pipe leading to the jetty, where a surprisingly large number of ruby-crowned kinglets were flitting about. We both managed to get some decent shots of them, which is normally something of a miracle, especially for me.
I seemed to have better luck with Nic’s camera this time. I’m not sure what I did differently, though maybe having full use of both arms and hands helped. Whatever it was, it was nice to not have a giant boatload of blurry photos to sort through (I had a smaller boatload of blurry photos, but most were pretty decent!)
The Shots
Soon™
The Birds (and other critters). Rare or rarely-seen birds highlighted in bold.
Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:
Anna’s hummingbird
Black-capped chickadee
Dark-eyed junco
Fox sparrow
Golden-crowned sparrow
Hairy woodpecker
House finch
Purple finch
Red-breasted nuthatch
Ruby-crowned kinglet
Song sparrow
Spotted towhee
Steller’s jay
Waterfowl and shorebirds:
American wigeon
Common merganser
Double-crested cormorant
Dunlin
Gadwall
Great blue heron
Green-winged teal
Mallard
Northern pintail
Common:
American crow
Assorted gulls
Rock pigeon
Raptors:
Bald eagle
Northern harrier
Non-birds:
Gray squirrel
Black squirrel
Douglas squirrel
A rat. An American rat? I am not an expert on rat types.
It was a chilly but tolerable day of birding, thanks to little breeze, though it started getting a wee bit nippy toward the end at Piper Spit.
Where: Reifel Bird Sanctuary (Delta), Burnaby Lake Regional Park (Burnaby) Weather: Mostly sunny, 3-5°C
The Outing
Reifel Bird Sanctuary
A view over the marshland from the West Dyke, with Rusty the pipe mid-shot.
We started out a tad later than usual, thanks to my second-to-last IV therapy. Because my morning routine got disrupted, I also forgot to change into my trail runners for the outing, but my feet survived.
The parking lot was packed. There were people everywhere. There were chickadees everywhere. We started off by having an Anna’s hummingbird sit on a wire fence and pose in front of us, then got to mix and mingle up close with the Sandhill crane family (two adults, two kids, strutting around like dinosaurs of yore).
The east dyke provided a rare glimpse of a saw-whet owl, but it was all tucked in and hard to see. The first bird blind had a heron standing on a log right outside it, though, affording some nice backlit shots.
As mentioned, chickadees were flitting all over the place, but also a lot of towhees, perhaps being bolder due to the colder temperatures and scarcer food supplies.
The main pond was largely empty and the entire area was absent of all wood ducks and geese. Some geese were seen outside the sanctuary in nearby fields. I wonder if they don’t like mingling with the winter migrants. Maybe the shovelers scare them.
Many of the smaller ponds had thin layers of ice and I saw a few ducks landing, but they all proved fairly coordinated, so no slapstick opportunities to be had.
I managed to take photos with the IV in my arm, but my good-to-bad ratio is way off. I’m probably being a bit of a dope, since I’m not used to the camera, plus I was trying to be extra careful in how I loved my right arm. Anyway, I got some good shots, at least.
Piper Spit
Assorted waterfowl in front of the land mass at Piper Spit.
There were also people a-plenty at Piper Spit and by later in the afternoon, a bit of a breeze was picking up, so it was cooler, too, but not Fonzie cool1Kids, ask your parents. Or maybe even grandparents at this point.. The land mass seemed to be occupied mostly by crows and gulls. There were geese here, but not many, and they kept relatively quiet. Always unnerving.
Blackbirds were all over the place and the waterfowl were getting regular handfuls of seed, which makes it easy to get chaos shots of dozens of birds thrashing about, but less so for the “gliding serenely along the water by itself” ones. Most of the winter birds were accounted for. My best shot was probably one of a regular ol’ crow. But it was a nice shot.
We opted to not check the Butterfly Garden since it is currently bereft of butterflies or any real garden. Maybe in a few months!
We’ll see how the next outing goes. The last few have felt a bit weird due to various technology or health issues, not to mention the regularity has been very irregular due to bad weather and things. There might be a little SAD thrown in, too, though it was mainly sunny for the day, which was spiffy. But it was still nice to get out!
The Shots
Soon™
The Birds (and other critters). Rare or rarely-seen birds highlighted in bold.
Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:
Anna’s hummingbird
Black-capped chickadee
Dark-eyed junco
Golden-crowned sparrow
House sparrow
Red-winged blackbird
Song sparrow
Spotted towhee
Woodpecker (possibly a Downy, we couldn’t see its head)
It’s the first birding of 2025. The trails were absolutely thick with joggers. There were some birds, too.
Where: Burnaby Lake Regional Park (Burnaby), Tlahutum Regional Park (Coquitlam) Weather: Partly sunny, 7-8°C
The Outing
Snoozing shorebirds, looking west from the pier.
Piper Spit
We arrived at Burnaby Lake to find it teeming…with runners. Seriously, I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen so many people jogging here. I guess it’s been some time since we had a non-rainy Saturday.
I did not have my camera because I am in the midst of IV treatments for an infection, which means I have a bandaged IV in my left arm, making it very awkward and unadvisable to try holding up a camera. I settled for taking lots of scenery shots instead.
But there were also birds, including both ruby and golden-crowned kinglets, nuthatches and the elusive chestnut-backed chickadees. The light was a tad gloomy, which made the bird shots more challenging, but added lots of mood to the scenery shots.
The Stumps (not my alternative country rock band) and a log at the intersection of the main trail and Conifer Loop were the main gathering spots for songbirds, due to both locations being festooned with seed. This was convenient for us!
At the Spit, the landmass is still quite large but today was mostly empty, save for a few gulls and a wandering group of pigeons. The Shorebird Spot™ was so low it was mostly mud, but a clutch of dowitchers was closer in to be shot, while a larger group dozed farther out.
Overall, a good variety, despite the light, plus a bonus seagull proudly strutting with a golf ball in its mouth.
Tlahutum Regional Park
Coquitlam River desktop wallpaper shot, 2025 edition.
There were mergansers, buffleheads, gadwalls and wigeons in the various waterways here, but as usual, none very close. We checked the community garden, but it is more the community swamp, so we opted to give it a few more weeks/months to dry out a bit before venturing in.
The Millennium Bridge over the rivers had a bunch of dots spray-painted on it, because in just a few days it’s being closed for two weeks to replace the deck. Had this been in progress, our trip to Tlahutum would have been a lot shorter.
I filled in multiple holes on the trail apparently dug up by an over-stimulated dog, as I’ve recently become a Tripping Hazard Expert (THE). It seemed like the right thing to do.
The large pond is currently at its most open and exposed, which aids in getting nice shots, especially when the water is calm and snazzy clouds are reflecting in it. Everything is very brown, though. It’s like an organic Quake level1Yes, I know Quake came out in the 1890s, this is a joke for The Olds.
Overall, a pleasant, if somewhat unusual first outing of the year. I should be handling a camera again, so look out world, incoming fuzzy junco shots!
The Shots
None! No camera. Instead, here is the best bird shot I got with my now ancient (in Tim Cook’s mind) iPhone 12:
A blackbird on a bench on a pier on a lake, in a park.
The Birds (and other critters). Rare, rarely-seen or recently returned birds highlighted in bold.
Where: Centennial Beach (Delta), Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake (Burnaby) Weather: Mostly sunny, some clouds, 9°C
The Outing
Centennial Beach
The tide was in, making Mud Bay look more bay, less mud.
In our last outing of 2024, the weather was actually pretty decent–and milder than normal, to boot.
I am still working my way around using Nic’s (borrowed) old camera, but managed to get some decent in-flight shots of geese today, so progress. My hand/eye coordination has finally learned the shutter/back button combo for taking photos, too. My brain is growing!
Centennial Beach had a decent mix of songbirds, plus a passel of yellowlegs and even some surf scoters, though they were way out on the bay (as usual). The tide was also way up, so no traipsing across the mud flats today. I saw a (for me) rare common goldeneye in the li’l pond near the picnic area, but my shots were only so-so. I fared better with others, including a few decent shots of robins, to prove I could still do it. I would be more upset if I regularly took blurry photos of, say, birds of paradise.
And yes, I shot eagle bums. But also eagle fronts, too. They were a bit high up, but that’s eagles for you.
In all, Centennial Beach turned out to be perfectly cromulent.
Piper Spit
This is actually one of the brighter shots I took of Burnaby Lake.
It felt colder here, mostly due to the wind, and clouds started blotting out the sun, making for darker, if moody, shots. The land mass remains intact and is still being claimed mostly by gulls and crows. We didn’t see as many songbirds, though there were chickadees darting about, and a few song sparrows.
Off the pier, most of the winter migrants were present, including a lone bufflehead, looking small and adorable, as is their way. Duck drama was a lot more toned down than on other recent visits. Maybe everyone has established their turf, or something.
We even saw two coots being…affectionate?
In all, a good visit, even if the light could have been a bit better. Here’s to brighter days of birding in 2025.
The Shots
Soon™
The Birds (and other critters). Rare, rarely-seen or recently returned birds highlighted in bold.
Where: Reifel Bird Sanctuary (Delta), Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake (Burnaby) Weather: Mostly cloudy, some drizzle, 5-7°C
The Outing
Reifel Bird Sanctuary
Mashland, with Rusty in the center, and a distant ship on the strait.
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
Piper Spit, looking east. Gray all the way down. And up.
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.
