Bald Eagle Country beginning of December

I’m hoping to get out this weekend and get some pictures of some of the other areas around here, but since it’s been a while since I posted anything, and since the month of December has brought and end to the steady rain we had in November, thought I’d share a few of the pictures I’ve taken recently.

We’ll start off with this Bald Eagle that was keeping an eye on us when we walked past him.

The Eagles get used to us and seem to recognize who belongs here and who doesn’t, my leashed Siberian Husky isn’t even considered a threat.

This is the view that greeted us that morning.

This pair of eagles were squabbling over a salmon…the water level is dropping now the rain has stopped, so there are fish carcasses left behind in the grass.

at that point the water levels were still high enough that the Trumpeter Swans were close in to shore, the water has dropped more now, so they are concentrated out further.

The next day there was a really strong ‘out flow’ wind – in the winter we tend to get winds blowing out from the interior of the province which means they are colder….all the birds were huddled against shorelines trying to stay warm.  Those are mainly all Mallard ducks.

these Canada Geese were cuddled up as were the Trumpeter swans.  You can see the white caps out on the water that is till covering the flats at this point.

For a number of reasons I didn’t get any pictures taken yesterday but I was up bright and early this morning in hopes of the snow flurries they had predicted materializing.  I know it is probably hard for you ‘snow birds’ to comprehend this, but some of us LOVE the cold and snow ~ and I’m one of them.  My promised snow didn’t show up, but it was cool with frost on the ground and you can see the amount of bird life out there, both on the gravel bars that are starting to reappear and in the water.  Lots and Lots of ducks!

This Eagle was sitting on one of the pilings…..

this guy had a fish in the grass and wasn’t going to move! 

Took this, this afternoon, it is pretty much the same view as the very first picture in this entry….water levels have dropped quite a bit.

Thanks to the dropping water and the fact that someone has kindly removed the bush barrier that the district put up (whole other subject – grrrr – sorry Gord if you happen to read this), I was finally able to walk over to the adjacent community park.  This is a few from what I like to call the ‘log bay’

and finally, on our way home, I managed to get some pictures of these Hooded Merganser Ducks.  These little guys are one of my favourite ducks, they are so pretty but not as gaudy as Wood ducks.  We seem to have quite a large flock of them wintering with us this year.  There are 2 males and 1 female in this picture.