March 22, 2008

Reifel Sanctuary Birding Foray

The Easter weekend brought a lot of people out to the Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary in BC's Lower Mainland today. Yumi and I spent over three hours walking and taking photographs. I'm amazed at the variety of beautiful birds we saw today, ranging from teeny balls of fluff to impressive great horned owls and cranes. Before we even arrived at the sanctuary, we ran across a field filled with thousands of snow geese:

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We could also hear killdeer, and we finally spotted three of them across the road from the snow geese:

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I'll just throw up a bunch of photos from this point -- enjoy, I sure had fun taking them!

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American Coot

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American Wigeon

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A territorial Canada Goose that took some feathers out of a mallard's butt...

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Bufflehead

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Female Ring-Necked Duck

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Great Horned Owl -- this fellow had about $50,000 worth of huge lenses and spotting scopes locked onto him :-)

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Mallard male

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Mallard male face closeup

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Mallard female face closeup

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Lovely female mallard feathers

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Lovely female mallard feathers, take two...

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Northern Pintail

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Wood Duck

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Redwing Blackbird

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Sandhill Crane

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Sandhill Crane profile

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Sandhill Crane closeup

Posted by Paul at March 22, 2008 08:40 PM