Another cold but quieter day

A cold but cloudless day today. Great day except for the cold temperature plus the skin-tightening wind chill.

A Red-Winged Blackbird was the first thing that I saw when I went to dyke. It was on top of the garbage can and didn't fly away when I approached it to take some pictures. It's quite a beautiful bird with the colorful "shoulder badges" that it wears on its shoulders, except for the fact that it's always so noisy, "Konkere-eh! Konkere-eh!" This reminded me of one thing. My TA once told me that blackbirds in Canada sing "konkere-eh" while the ones south of the border sing only "konkeree." I wonder if this is true or not. I think I'll have to observe this phenomenon myself to say for sure, but definitely interesting.

Speaking of being noisy. The Snow Geese were still at the same spot as yesterday. However, the group was very quiet today. I guess they do take breaks from all the honking. I saw a few more large groups along the mouth of the Fraser River today. With the cold temperature lately, I wonder if it's enough to motivate them to spend their winter southward.

Saw three Great Blue Herons today. One of them (on the right) was extremely stylish with a little bit of Mohawk. I wonder who its stylist is?

I also saw a colorful red and black caterpillar today on the trail. I took a couple of pictures before removing it from the road. A Yellow Jacket Wasp, Vespula vulgaris, was also observed on an unknown flower. It wasn't moving much at all when I got closer, and since its autumn, I think it might be near the end of its life. While I was taking pictures of the wasp, a fearless harvestman climbed onto my shoe.

On the Fraser mouth, a small group of wigeons was observed. But I wasn't sure if they are mainly Americans or Europeans.
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