Exploring Kootenay Lake

After a week or so’s absence, Mountain Bluebirds reappeared at Kokanee Creek Park. While they do breed around here, I suspect that the departures have to do with those birds that were stopping by on their way to breed farther north. Mountain Bluebirds are the more common of our two bluebird species. The other one is the Western Bluebird.

A female Mountain Bluebird eyes the grasslands as it hunts from a red-osier shrub.

A male Mountain Bluebird similarly eyes the ground for comestibles. He proves successful.

The male descends to the ground and returns with a grub (my first recording of such a capture).

There are many species that pass through our region. Some breed and raise their young here; many are tourists that only pause for a while, feed, and move on. Sometimes it is difficult to tell who was hatched and raised young locally and who was not.

Today, I observed (what others undoubtedly already knew) that the Red Crossbill raises its chicks beside the Lake.

A female Red Crossbill eyes one of its chicks.

The parent prepares to feed. Note: this freshly fledged chick has yet to develop its crossed bill.

It then feeds its chick.

Turkey Vultures return in mid-March, but these seen yesterday were the first I had noticed.

Three of five Turkey Vulture were captured in one shot as they soared on high. They are recognizable, even from a distance, by the way they hold their wings in a shallow V.

One then descended for a closer look, but soon left. Apparently, it decided that I was in an insufficiently advanced state of decay.

This is the mating season for geese (as it is for many other species). The implication is that there will be great attentiveness and tenderness between mates. However, along with this goes protectiveness. When another male wishes to possess your girl, you fight.

A moment of tenderness between Canada Geese: female, left; male, right.

Two male geese do aerial combat over a female. The defender, biting the aggressor, won.

This is the first osprey that I have seen this year. However, Patricia Bambrick saw one at the beginning of last week in Crescent Valley, and Lorraine Symmes saw this same one yesterday on the North Arm. Indeed, it was her sighting that prompted me to take this picture.

Ospreys begin arriving in April (the males come first) and will stay, breed, and raise their chicks for the next half year.

My first osprey of 2019.

A downy, our smallest woodpecker, was flying from one tree to the next looking for things to eat, such as beetle grubs under the bark.

The Downy Woodpecker makes a visual inspection of a tree branch.

It also puts its ear to the bark to listen for the sounds of chewing within. By turning its head in this way, the downy nicely shows its the red patch on the back of its head, indicating that it is a male.

It then flew to the next tree and repeated the process.

Chickadees build cavity nests in trees, often by adapting natural cavities or ones made by other birds, such as woodpeckers. Both parents work on clearing out the cavity, although it is the female who builds and provisions a deeply hidden nesting chamber within the cavity.

I watched the two parents fly back and forth to a cavity as they carried mouthfuls of woodchips to dump elsewhere. Presumably this is done so that a pile of chips below the tree would not betray the nest to predators.

This nest is going to be interesting to watch over the next two months as the couple raise their chicks.

A Black-capped Chickadee has dumped chips elsewhere and now returns to continue excavation.

After a short stint deep in the cavity, the chickadee emerges with a beak full of chips for disposal, and even spills some before flying off.