Juvenile Ospreys have now been driven from the nest (see last year’s, It’s time you went) and are now out fishing on their own.
Juveniles are distinctive, and now is the brief time to see them before they migrate and return in a few years as breeding adults. The wing feathers of the juveniles are tipped in white, almost as if they have been dipped in cream. And unlike the adults, which have yellow eyes, the juveniles rivet you with an orange stare.
Throughout the summer, I wondered why I had not seen a Killdeer, our most common plover. Granted, I had seen a number of other shorebirds: Spotted Sandpiper, American Avocet and Wilson’s Phalarope, Semi-palmated Sandpiper and Least Sandpiper.
Yesterday, I finally saw a Killdeer.
The Killdeer was foraging along the lakeshore.
Killdeers, as do all plovers, hunt mainly by sight—unlike sandpipers, that hunt by touch.
The Killdeer retrieves what might be a fish egg. It is quickly consumed.
When the bird darted across my path, I guessed it was a Merlin. However, a Merlin is smaller and prefers forest clearings to the denser brush where this bird was hunting. This was a Cooper’s Hawk, albeit an immature one.
The infrequent local sightings of Cooper’s Hawks are usually made in late summer and early fall when hawks are migrating south for the winter. There are three pictures of this bird, below.
I have watched many nectar sippers on flowers. The arrival of a second one usually drives the first away.
Today, I was watching both a Drone Fly (Eristalis tenax) and a Western White Butterfly (Pontia occidentalis) roam around a field of Asters (Canadanthus modestus?) as they sipped nectar. What was unexpected was that at one point they shared the same flower for a while with no apparent sense of conflict.
Fish shown recently were being eaten by an eagle, a loon, and a heron. The fish shown now is in the clutches of an osprey.
Birds have not been shown being eaten by a fish. Apparently, fish are not at the top of the food chain.
An osprey settles in to eat a fish (a kokanee, see comments below).
Yesterday’s posting, Heron’s good minute, resulted when a kingfisher was trumped by the greater drama. The juvenile Belted Kingfisher (possibly smarting from the earlier neglect) returned this morning and posed.
I have sought shots such as these for years.
It is surprising that in all the time I have spent watching the Great Blue Heron hunt for fish, I had not seen it catch and eat one (although, I had seen one catch a vole). In under a minute yesterday morning, I watched a heron alight, catch a fish, and swallow it. That one meal might sate it for days.
I had wandered out with my camera to watch a kingfisher, but that delight was quickly eclipsed when a juvenile heron landed in front of me and immediately reached for something in the shallows.
It retrieved a Large-scale Sucker. However, the fish, being athwart the bill, was not aligned for swallowing.
So, the fish was dropped and picked up again near the head. The imbalance caused the body of the fish to rotate more in line with the heron’s bill. 
That being done, the whole fish quickly vanished down the gullet.
In this posting, the fridge is scoured and eight leftovers are added to a goulash.
A Columbian Ground Squirrel looks regal as it surveys its domain. 
A Great Blue Heron looks like a pterodactyl as it balances in a tree.
A female Common Whitetail Dragonfly hunts from a twig.
A male Common Whitetail Dragonfly rests on a path.
And a male White-tailed Deer stares into the camera.
The Audubon’s Warbler is a subspecies of the Yellow-rumped Warbler.
Darners mate.
A dipper peeks in the water of a creek for something to eat.
The redfish (Kokanee, which are landlocked Sockeye Salmon) are spawning again. Crowds of people have gathered to watch them; a Black Bear helps himself to the fish; mallards await the tasty eggs; gulls stand by, and ravens gorge on fish. Despite the fact that a cornucopia is available, there can be acrimony among these predators.
So it was that I watched a subadult eagle steal a fish from some ravens. The irony is that a recent posting showed a raven trying unsuccessfully to take a fish from an eagle. Now, this posting shows an eagle stealing one from ravens.
The Kokanee have crowded the stream as the males compete for females.
A small unkindness of ravens is gathering to consume one of the fish.
Overhead, a sub-adult Bald Eagle spots them and sees an opportunity.
Swooping down, it steals the fish, now clutched in its claws, from the ravens.
The ravens scatter amid vociferous complaints.
There is nothing the ravens can do about it except whine as the eagle flies off with its prize.
Marauding menace
A search of news services reveals that a number of municipalities in the Province either have implemented or anticipate implementing deer culls.
As a public service for locals who might mistakenly view visits from deer as one of the delightful perquisites of rural living, I offer this morning’s shot for easy identification of this marauding municipal menace.
I am personally committed to shooting them on sight.
