One of the first weekends we had some nice weather, and went down to Reifel and Boundary Bay to take some pictures. It was good to get out (it had been a while since I picked up the camera), and since it is winter there are lots of birds around.
It was a beautiful day. As we were walking along the dyke, a tug went out the river pulling a couple of barges of wood chips. The mountains looked great.
As always in winter, the birds were active down at Reifel. There were lots of different kinds of ducks, and the sandhill cranes were seemingly everywhere. While most of the birds I knew and had seen before, there was one hawk that I wasn't familiar with, that took off after only one photo, and I'm still not sure what it was.
I'm not sure what this hawk is, and I only got one shot in before he took off.
A pair of sandhill cranes.
After wandering Reifel for a while, we headed over to Boundary Bay to see if there were any snowy owls. I wasn't expecting any, but it's always worth having a look. It was pretty low key afternoon, but a couple of good shots made it worthwhile.
Mount Baker was looking pretty good on this clear afternoon. There were a number of raptors out over the long grasses, but they were usually too far away to get much of a shot.
For most of the time we were there I was tracking what i thought was a Northern Harrier. After getting home and looking at the pics on the computer, it turned out that it was actually an owl. Then a harrier turned up, and the owl spent a lot of time trying to chase it away. Sadly this shot is not in focus, but I caught the owl coming in to take a swipe at the hawk.
After a while the owl gave up and left the harrier to his hunting.
As the light faded, I turned to a different (and my favourite) subject.
We even managed a self-portrait
The next morning, from the rooftop