With all that’s going on, I’m not sure I’m going to do a “Christmas” post this year. I’ll see - maybe I’ll decide to later. After Justine and I got back from Toronto (amazingly with zero flight issues!), we had a day at home before we headed to Galiano. With the ferry schedule, we had some time so decided to stop at Reifel on the way out to see what was going on at the sanctuary.
On the drive into the sanctuary, there was a big flock of birds out in one of the farmer’s fields. It was pretty far out, but it looked like a combo of snow geese and trumpeter swans - with a couple of eagles thrown in for good measure.
It was a really nice day, and we were blessed with some nice light as the clouds came and went over the couple of hours that wwe wandered.
One of the fun aspects of this trip was that there was a small flock of sandhill cranes hanging about the main entrance area. They were making quite the noise, but also were willing to tolerate people being about. There haven’t been a lot of them around on most of our visits.
As usual for this time of year, it was mostly ducks that were of interest. There were quite a few different species about.
Near the entrance, there was an eagle sitting up in the tree,
Part way through our walk, we heard a kingfisher. Of course I tried my best to chase him down, but he kept flying further down the path. He kept landing just close enough to tease me along, before flying off further away. So the photos weren’t great.
We only spent a couple of hours walking around, but it was a nice day to get out for a walk. We didn’t see too many interesting or new birds, but there were a few, and it was well worth the stop.