Shooting Birds on our Home Turf

August 1, 2024

While we have been home for the past couple of months, we have continued to fool around with bird photos, just from our front deck, and some from as far away as Cowichan Bay (a whopping 6 km excursion). Since our list of birds spotted in 2024 was mainly compiled abroad, we were actually able to add some "new" birds of late.

Like this common one:

There are also quite a few that somehow we have not noticed before, despite over 30 years in the same house. Like these:

The Rufus Hummingbird. There are only two species here, the Rufus and the Anna's. Anna's are year round while Rufus is migratory.

24208 Barred Owl (file photo) Lots of these lurk around our house.

For a small change, we would make the excursion to nearby Cowichan Bay.

Way out at Cowichan Bay. This Indigenous figure looks quite welcoming, but I think the settlers that landed here were pretty aggressive. The Cowichan Tribe itself fought some tough battles with other native groups, in the Bay.

Cowichan Bay. European (hwunitum - white people) settlement began south of here, at Victoria, around 1843. Then as the Cowichan Tribes web site puts it: "In 1862, 100 hwunitum settlers, accompanied by a gunboat, arrived in the Cowichan Valley to take some of our lands. Governor Douglas accompanied them, and promised our Cowichan ancestors that they would be paid for the land the hwunitum settler occupied. The gunboat kept watch in Cowichan Bay. However, Governor Douglas’ promise to us remains dishonoured to this day."

The Bay, of course, does not reveal it's turbulent past now. It rather features ice cream shops, and water birds to look at.

These days we are seeing no eagles at the dump. They must have all gone fishing. Certainly there are quite a few around the Bay:

Bald eagles in Cowichan Bay. We often wonder how that float home stays afloat!

There are a few other birds around, good for practice with the new camera:

There are so many of these Turkey Vultures about, but unlike in Mexico, we have never seen one perched.

For most of the shots above, we have been practicing with our new Nikon P950 super zoom camera. At first the camera, which weighs three times as much as our Lumix point and shoot, seemed impressive and even a little intimidating. But now we see it is still just another "toy" camera, with non interchangeable lens and cell phone sized sensor. This was brought home clearly when we visited our brother in law Erhard in Victoria the other week. Erhard has a "real" Nikon camera and uses a 200-500 lens to capture birds in his area. His shots are dramatically snappier than ours. We would like to credit his camera with this, but of course there is also the possibility that Erhard knows what he is doing!

Here are some Erhard shots, just from the stretch between his house and ours. That is, from the cycle route to our south, to Victoria, an excursion of little more than 40 km each way.

Erhard and Karyn ran into this guy half way between their house and ours.

Herons probably more fighting than dancing.

It's usually Killer Whales that are spotted near Victoria, but here Erhard has a Humpback.

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Suzanne GibsonYes, there is a difference between a bridge camera and a camera using a 200 - 500 mm zoom! But you are getting great pictures with your new camera. Change over to a full frame camera and giant zoom when you can't ride your bike any more. That will give you time to save up for it, too.
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2 months ago

Kristine OvensYou both continue to inspire me to be fitter!
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2 months ago