2011/01/24

Good wildlife-watching day; Bad photography day

Life sometimes like to play funny tricks on you. For example, today is incredibly cloudy and a bad day for photography, but yet I saw so many cool critters, e.g. Muskrat, lots of raptors, Mink(! - no photo). Sigh, blurry photos will still serve as a good day.

First, I saw a Muskrat eating vegetation in the ditch. First Muskrat of the year!

Cloudy day
Should just have photograph black and white images all afternoon.

Cooper's Hawk (Accipiter cooperii)
Managed a relatively decent shot of a Cooper's Hawk (I think). There was another Cooper's before seeing this one, but I got only two photos of its dark back. Glad I saw this one just above me.

Two Mute Swans feeding in the muddy lowtides in Finn Slough. The dirtier looking swan is the juvenile, and according to a fellow birder, one of the mates of this pair died and so it was up to this single adult to take up the parental role.

S for Swan
Adult. S for Swan.

Juvenile Mute Swan (Cygnus olor)
Juvenile. Not sure if it is because it is a cloudy day, but it's bill is not as colorful as the adult's.

A female Northern Harrier flew towards me while biking and then went over my head and landed on a perch in the middle of someone's backyard. Another blurry photo.

I also saw a mink swimming in the Fraser River beside the riverbank. When it sensed me stopping in my track, it dived into the water and peeked behind a rock on the riverbank before disappearing. Sigh.

Rail tracks and Red-tailed Hawk
A nice-looking image taken mainly because of the Red-tailed Hawk on the treetop.

Taking off!

Perched on a taller tree behind a fence. But still keeping a close eye on me.

Immature Bald Eagle.

Another terrible taking-off photo.

Parental love and care
A pair of Bald Eagle nesting near Finn Slough, beside the packaging building.

Saw almost all the common raptors I can possibly find in Richmond, and yet I had no good photos to show for it. Well, I guess I can't ask for too many good things all at once.

PS - Saw Nature's "Bird of the Gods" episode tonight on PBS. What a fantastic episode about the Birds-of-Paradise in Papua New Guinea. In addition, it was incredibly sad to see in the end that the Papuan ornithologist Paul Igag passed away last year. R.I.P.
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1 comment:

PSYL said...

Thanks, Tim. I look forward to reading your posts too.

I agree with you. It's hard to convince those in the older generation when they spent most of their lives thinking otherwise. We can only rely on ourselves and the future generation to make changes and be different and positive.

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