Category: Special Places

Tundra Swans

Thursday’s trip to see the dentist in Vancouver and have lunch with old friends turned out better than I would ever have expected, Although the weather was quite varied, I saw more sunshine than I’ve seen in weeks.

And on my visit to Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge I was greeted by the largest flock of Tundra Swans I’ve ever seen. In fact, I spent so much time trying to get pictures of them that I nearly was late for my luncheon.

Of course, seeing new birds is often no assurance that you’ll actually manage to get decent pictures, as it’s often much later when you’ve observed them that you learn where you need to be to get the best shots, which didn’t prevent me from shooting nearly two hundred shots, most of which have already been deleted.

I spent the greater part of the morning sitting in a blind observing the Tundra Swans taking off in small groups from the far side of the lake,

Tundra swans taking off

circling back at the end of the lake, and then making a fly by as they headed back north.

Tundra Swan Flying Abovea

Later, we saw a small flock paddle slowly south on the lake,

Tundra Swans All in a RowR

only to be greeted by two swans charging the group, honking wildly. I was sure we were in for a territorial fight,

Aggressive Tundra Swans

but they stopped before they close enough to actually hurt each other. In fact, one of the two joined the other group while the other swan floated away nonchalantly.

Tundra Swans Honking at Each Other

I actually got better pictures of other birds I’ll be posting the next few days, but for me these are the most memorable pictures of the day.

Fall at Belfair

I have a hard time believing that anyone in the Pacific Northwest wasted time inside shopping today with the kind of beautiful, crisp fall day we had:

I do know that there were so many people walking at Belfair today that the only birds we saw were ones far from the trail. Of course, the gunfire from duck hunters that echoed across the water might have explained the fact that the main thing we saw today were young cormorants, like this one:

And these who crowded into the few landing places that weren’t covered by the high tides:

We did manage to catch a glimpse of a few other ducks, though, like this beautiful female Goldeneye.

Perhaps the brilliant sunshine couldn’t restore summer’s beautiful greens, but it can certainly make Fall’s browns sparkle.

Old Acquaintances

I’m thankful that after the morning fog burned off that it was a beautiful, sunny day here in the Pacific Northwest and that I was able to head out for The Nisqually Wildlife Refuge.

Much of the morning I played tag with the sun. I suspect the diffuse, gray skies actually made it easier to get a good picture of this male Bufflehead because I didn’t blow out the whites like I usually manage to do.

Bufflehead Duck

At the end of the first leg of my walk I was greeted by the largest flock of Cedar Waxwings I’ve ever seen.

Cedar Waxwings

The highlight of the day came at the other end of the walk when I got another chance to see the pair of River Otters that live somewhere nearby. I think they were impatient for us to move on because one of them would swim out from behind the reeds every so often to take a look at us but would then swim back into the reeds after spotting us. Of course, we kept waiting for them to come out so we could get a better shot. Guess who won that battle of wills?

River Otter

Luckily we were following a dedicated group of bird watchers with scopes, or we would have never seen this owl. In fact, even with some help I had trouble seeing it, probably because it didn’t want to be seen.

Owl