We had Ethan and Addison stay with us last weekend, which was fun as always. We packed quite a bit into a couple of days, including a short walk down at Boundary Bay. We had originally planned to go to Refeil, but there was some issue on site, and they weren’t letting anyone in. As it was a beautiful day, we headed over to Boundary Bay to walk along the dike.

It was a beautiful day, with stunning views south to Mount Baker.

While they were a long way off, there number of small shorebirds out on the flats was pretty incredible.

We walked up and back along the path along the dyke. There wasn’t a lot to see and the kids were getting a bit bored. We did have some success with a few raptor sightings, mostly at a distance, os it wasn’t a complete write-off.

A female northern harrier over the flats

She hung around for a while, hunting the small birds in the area.

We also had a brief glimpse at what I think was a short-eared owl.

Shorebirds flying along the water’s edge.

The male northern harrier

And the highlight of the afternoon was a merlin that sat in the tree for a long time.

The merlin sat in the tree for quite a while - keeping an eye on the little birds that were flitting about in the bushes along the path. So I was able to get quite a few shots of it.