Exploring Kootenay Lake

This is the first of what likely will be three postings about Tree Swallows. The first is just pictures of them flying. The second will be of it feeding its chicks. The third will be a mystery I have with it concerning its treatment of the feathers of other birds.

One might wonder why I would start with these shots of it flying. Well, the Tree Swallow is a rather fast flyer, and it just was not easy getting a number of close-up sharp in-air shots. So I show the few I have. They are offered without comment.

The Northern Flicker, our most common woodpecker, is frequent, but often it is seen at a distance. Today, it was near, so I snapped some shots.

First, an old shot showing what the topside looks like. This is a male feeding its two chicks.

Today’s female flicker is flying towards me. The orange under feathers is striking.

And when the flicker is flying away, the underside is spectacular.

This is a quirky posting. Most postings are about non-human nature. This is not.

I go for photographic walks with my daughter, Cynthia. We are often separated by anything from three metres to thirty metres as we observe nature.

Yesterday, we watched an osprey flying in circles over the lake hunting fish. It eventually caught one and brought it back our way. One picture I took I really liked. It was the osprey alighting on a distant tree branch, presumably to eat the tasty head of the fish (a common practice) before taking the rest to the nest. Alas, it promptly flew off again when it spotted another bird which, it feared, might try to steal the fish. But the picture of it landing on the tree branch was fine.

All this time, Cynthia was behind bushes somewhere not very far away doing her own observing.

I got home and showed her the osprey landing on the branch with its fish. Cynthia said, “I got one just like that.” I show both pictures. They were probably taken within a millisecond of each other. Minor differences reflect differences in our positions and cameras. Other than that, we both apparently thought: This might make a good shot. 

Cynthia’s picture of an osprey landing on a branch with its fish.

My picture of an osprey landing on the branch with its fish.

Many larger birds reuse their (chick hatching) nest over and over again in successive years. Indeed to combat parasites, the Bald Eagle will keep adding a layer atop their nest until it is so large that the wind brings down the tree. At the other extreme, hummingbirds build a new nest each year. Between these sizes, birds might build new or reuse an older nest. The robin builds new (see previous posting, blog.kootenay-lake.ca/?p=34611), and the Eastern Kingbird reuses.

Indeed, yesterday, I found a Eastern Kingbird incubating in the same nest which it had been feeding chicks in last year on July 16, (blog.kootenay-lake.ca/?p=33529).

I will have watch it for the pending chicks.

A Eastern Kingbird incubates eggs in the same nest it used last year.

The battle went on for about ten minutes: a crow took on a Bald Eagle.

But the eagle didn’t try to tackle the crow, it just kept flying away.

Eagles generally like to raid the nests of others for food (now is the time for this) and crows do not like to lose their chicks, so crows actually tackle eagles and drive them off. The odd thing is that the eagle, a bigger more powerful bird, just flies away and avoids the fight. 

Now, it has been said that the eagle cannot be bothered to fight back, for it might be injured. But, the eagle will fight back with a bird that is closer to its own size, such as a osprey. Why then does it not want to tackle a much smaller crow? It is likely that, being smaller, the crow is much more manoeuvrable than the eagle, and so the risk to the eagle is correspondingly greater.

A crow drives off a juvenile Bald Eagle.

We are about as far north as the Bobolink gets in our region of British Columbia. It has travelled here from central South America to breed. Seen yesterday morning was a male, but I haven’t yet seen the female.

The male Bobolink was singing as it perched on a bush in the grasslands of Kokanee Park.

It flew off, but only to a nearby bush.

It turned out that there were two birds close to one another and I sometimes followed the wrong one. The other was an Eastern Kingbird. Here, it is flying off.