A Juvenile Weekend

If you're a fan of cute young birds, this post is for you. This was my first weekend outing since returning from the Okanagan in early June. That excursion is detailed here: Okanagan Birding 2017

On Saturday the 17th I played golf at Belmont Golf Course in Langley. There's a healthy population of Canada Geese on the course all year. At this time of the year there's a cross-section of Goslings at various stages of development.


Canada Geese - Belmont Golf Course, Langley BC

These geese are molting and are probably unable to fly at this stage, so they stay close to the water.


Canada Geese - Belmont Golf Course, Langley BC

The next day I was off to Reifel to meet up with the person who runs a bird photo site where I post some of my better photos. The site is named BirdViewing.com and it was based out of Montreal. Chris, the creator of the site, has recently relocated to Richmond, so I finally got to meet him.

The theme at Reifel was youngsters as well. Here are some younger Canada Geese.


Canada Geese (Imm) - Reifel Bird Sanctuary, Delta BC

Probably the cutest bird of the day was this single Wood Duck chick. I did a bit of research and the hens lay up to a dozen eggs, so I'm not sure why this female only had the one chick. Perhaps it was the runt and the siblings were on their own already.


Wood Duck (F) and (Imm) - Reifel Bird Sanctuary, Delta BC

I had to post more than one photo of these two.



Wood Duck (Imm) and (F) - Reifel Bird Sanctuary, Delta BC

Since it was Father's Day, I got a nice shot of a male, maybe the dad of the chick...

Wood Duck - Reifel Bird Sanctuary, Delta BC

Of course the Mallards are famous for having many offspring and they soon learn that Reifel is a safe place to approach humans.


Mallards (F) and (Imm) - Reifel Bird Sanctuary, Delta BC

Over on the West Dyke trail there were different species of Swallows buzzing around catching insects on the fly to feed to their young. This Tree Swallow looks close to fledging, but is still hoping for free meals at this point in time.


Tree Swallow - Reifel Bird Sanctuary, Delta BC

Purple Martins have family life nailed.  Here's a shot from long distance,  The male is the dark blue bird, with possibly a female on its left. The other three all look like recently fledged chicks.


Purple Martins - Reifel Bird Sanctuary, Delta BC

My last bird of the day was a singing male Marsh Wren. This video was taken from 50+ meters with the Nikon zoomed out.

It's my first sighting of this species for the year. I'd heard them in other places, but was reluctant to add it to my 2017 list until I'd had either a good look at one, or a reasonable photo.


Marsh Wren - Reifel Bird Sanctuary, Delta BC - 2017 Bird #165

That ended this day's outing.