December

Here it is the 5th day of December and I’m just getting around to getting a post done.  On the 1st we made the long trip in to Boundary Bay to see if we could find any Snowy Owls…

we did – but they were so far out that this was about as decent a picture as we got.  Further out there were masses of Dunlin, Northern Pintail Ducks and American Wigeons. 

back to home and I did get for a walk on the 2nd…I’m putting this here because I was amazed at the difference in the water levels between this shot and today…

that is a pretty dramatic drop in just a matter of a few days!  That drop has uncovered many, many salmon carcasses so there are many, many gulls busy feeding off of them..

Gulls everywhere you look!  It took me a bit to spot them – I could hear Swans…

and finally noticed them laying in the sun on the gravel bars…these were all Trumpeter Swans – I see there are lots more further out…didn’t hear any obvious Tundra’s today.

Here are a few more of the sleepy heads and you can see Bald Eagles scattered out there, but nothing like we’ve seen some days.  Surprisingly there weren’t even any flying overhead…which is where you usually see them on sunny crisp days like today.

I’m putting this in because Green-wing Teal are so spooky that you can’t often get an even reasonably close shot.  There were lots of ducks out there today – mainly Mallard and Green-wing Teal with a few American Wigeon, and when I downloaded the pictures, I noticed a couple of Northern Pintail in the mix as well.

the place to see Northern Pintail is Boundary Bay! I have never seen so many Pintail in my life!!!  They were all in close…

feeding right at the shoreline..

The only other thing I’ll mention today is that the bushes and trees along the trail, in fact over the entire area, were absolutely alive with Chickadee’s – both Black-capped and Chestnut-backed…more of both than we’ve seen for the past few winters.