I don’t feel at ease without a backlog of readers’ photos, and it’s fun to choose which ones I’ll show each morning. Today I’m in a bird mood, which is good because birds are pretty much what everyone sends! Our morning selection is a panoply of nice photos from reader Ed Kroc, who sends the information below:
I just returned to Vancouver after 10 days in Chicago (well, in and around Chicago), during prime autumn colour viewing time. I got a couple of decent wildlife shots too. I’m operating on about a one month lag with my photo cataloguing though, so I won’t send those along for awhile yet.
For now, I wanted to send along some shots from around southwest BC. There are two familiar species I’ve sent before, as well as two new ones.
From Esquimalt Lagoon, a little west of Victoria, BC on Vancouver Island, some Western Sandpipers (Calidris mauri) on the hunt. I love watching these small, probing shorebirds. They remind me of hummingbirds: tirelessly scouring their surroundings for comestibles at a rapid and nearly constant pace—only sandpipers rely on their legs for most of the locomotion.
Western sandpipers on patrol:
Western sandpipers on the hunt:
Two pictures of a truly regal Wood Duck (Aix sponsa). This male was just moulting into his winter plumage on Lost Lagoon in Stanley Park, Vancouver last month. I spotted him in a royal repose atop a fallen piece of his namesake, and crept up through the vegetation to watch him as stealthily as I could. He spotted me in the first photo and gave me a wonderfully piercing supermodel pout in the second. The vivid green in the background is the residue of a large green algae bloom on the lagoon from late in the summer.
Back on Vancouver Island, a few photos from Sooke, BC, a beautiful area west of Victoria right at the point where the Strait of Juan de Fuca peels off from the rest of the Salish Sea west toward the open Pacific. First is a photo of a Common Murre (Uria aalge) in eclipse plumage. The lighting conditions were terrible on such a dark and rainy day, but his/her friendly face is in focus. I love the deep chocolate colour of the plumage. In the sunlight, the plumage appears almost black, but in the rain it takes on a totally different tone. These murres are amazing to watch fish, as they hold their wings out at rigid right angles from their bodies, but bent back perfectly parallel to the body at the radius and ulna, gliding along about a foot underwater like submerged airplanes.
Finally, two pictures of the aptly named Chestnut-backed Chickadee (Poecile rufescens). A distinctly west-coast species, this chickadee shares the usual cheeky behaviour of its more eastern cousins while maintaining a rich, chestnut cape that helps it blend in with the bark of the local trees. Here, one chickadee noms part of a pinecone before spotting me snapping his/her snack with my camera. I can’t help but think that he/she looks a little affronted after spotting me spying!
I’m sure Diana MacPherson will interpret this expression for us:
🐣
That pinecone is as striking as the bird itself!
b&
Yes, just gorgeous colour! From a brief research, it seems red pine cones are usually juvenile. I had no idea that they could ever be naturally red! There are many commercial offerings of cones painted/sprayed red.
Even without the bird the photo would have been worth taking.
We have several dozen Douglas Fir, Pseudotsuga menziesii on our property here on the mainland side of the Salish Sea and none of them have this intense red colour. If the saturation and hue weren’t pushed to better show the bird’s colours, I don’t know how to explain it.
I may have told this here before, but anyways, a popular tale attributed to the Salish people is that in the Beginning Time, when the Great Father noticed that Mouse was eating too many of the Fir’s seeds, He admonished it and told it to stop. Mouse couldn’t resist for long and when the Great Father again caught it in the act, He made the cone close up, trapping Mouse for all time. The shape of the bracts as seen here is the inspiration for the just so story.
Another variant has the mice asking to be protected by the Fir from a forest fire. It allowed them to climb its fire resistant trunk and hide in the cones.
When mature, the cones open in dry weather to spread their seeds on the wind. Rain will make them close again.
Most origins myths are charming and / or entertaining tails. I wonder how I’d think of Genesis were it not taken so seriously….
b&
Tails?? Jus cuz it’s National Cat Day…
Nice photos. The duck looks quite well fed. All these birds remind me of my last visit to the West Coast, thanks!
I think the chickadee is contemplating dessert.
I don’t know about “west coast” re: the chestnut backed chickadee. Here in NW Montana, we have, delightedly, had a large population in the last five years or so . . . due to warming?