I’ve pulled together a couple of posts into one, from some time spent exploring around Delta. We normally spend a fair bit of time at Reifel, but we also spent an afternoon walking on the dike nearby - not something we’ve done before.
A Walk on the Dike
Thanksgiving day was a beautiful, sunny day so we wanted to make sure we had a chance to enjoy it (especially given all the rain of late).
The map of our walk - a little over 5 km.
We parked at the end of River Road, and headed out along the dike. Right away, we had 2 bald eagles up over the path - the first ones we’ve seen in months!
Two mature bald eagles.
After the eagles, it was honestly pretty quiet for birds. There wasn’t a lot to be seen. As you can see from the map, the “inside” of our walk is all farm fields, with the outside looking out to the ocean. It’s quite a nice spot, on a sunny day. The wind was not too strong, but it was still quite cool.
This is the time of year that the snow geese are migrating south from the Arctic. We say this group of them off in one field, or so we thought. More on this later…
There were thousands of ducks out on the marshy flats.
About half way through our walk, we had one of the most interesting sightings we’ve had in a long time! As I mentioned, there were a ton of ducks out on the flats. At one point, they all exploded from the mud where they were feeding. A hawk of some sort (we never really saw it) dove in and knocked one of the ducks out of the air! But before it could claim it’s prize, a bald eagle came flashing out from the trees near us, bullied the hawk and snatched its meal. It was pretty cool.
The ‘inside” of our walk is all farms, and we got a chance to see the fall harvest in action in a number of places. We’re losing so much of our farmland in the lower mainland, and it’s good to see some of it remain as working farms.
Justine on the dike on our walk.
There were not a lot of birds, but you can always count on the sparrows…
The walk was going to be an out-and-back, and at the furthest extent of the walk there was a farm that had the biggest pear trees I’ve ever seen! There were at least 4 of them, they were each 50-60’ tall, and absolutely loaded with fruit. I have no idea how old they must be, and I have no clue how you’d ever harvest all that fruit!
At this point, we turned around and headed back towards where the car was parked. There were a couple of interesting sights along the way.
You remember the “snow geese” we saw out in the field at the beginning of our walk. As we came back to that spot we were confused to see some dude out in the field picking them up?!?!?!?! I guess they were decoys? Maybe he was trying to keep the real thing off his winter crops?
Snow geese against the mountains.
A Northern Flicker was the last thing we saw as we headed back to the start of the walk.
We had a nice walk, saw some cool things and enjoyed a nice day in the sun!
A Visit to Reifel
Justine went back to Ontario to see er parents for the weekend, so I had to figure out what to do with myself. The weather wasn’t very nice, but it looked like I might be able to get in a quick trip to Reifel on Sunday morning, before the rain started again. I got there right before the gates opened, and the rain was holding off.
A map of my walk around Reifel.
Just inside the front gate, at one of the first big ponds you come to there was a huge group of great blue herons hanging out together on some downed trees.
A bit of a closer view of one of the herons.
Sadly, while the rain didn’t start immediately, the weather was pretty bad. It was very overcast and dark, and didn’t make for taking good photos. Plus there wasn’t much going on - even the birds could sense that the rain was coming and they were hunkered down.
This merganser was one of the few interesting things I saw on my walk.
There was a whole flock of these ruby-crowned kinglets. So hard to get a decent picture of in the poor lighting conditions.
Sadly the rain came in only half an hour into my walk. I did stick it out for another 15 minutes or so, but it became pretty clear that it was not going to let up any time soon. Still, it was good to get out for a walk and see what was about.