Westsong Walkway

Songhees Point is a good place to get an overview of Victoria because you can see many of the city's features simply by looking in another direction. Today's photo was taken from the same point as yesterday's but here we are looking west down the outer harbour. That's the start of the Westsong Walkway on the right. When it enters Esquimalt it becomes the West Bay Walkway and in the far distance on the left can be seen the houseboats and sailboats of Sailor's Cove and West Bay Marina.

Most Popular?

Great Blue Herons are year round residents here but I didn't see much of this one during the summer and was happy to see him back on his usual perch high in an evergreen tree above the Sailor's Cove end of the West Bay Walkway. He's there most mornings, alternately preening and snoozing in the sun. I'm guessing that these birds are the most photographed birds in North America because they're big, they're widespread, they often live in or near urban environments, and (photographer's delight) they often stand perfectly still for long periods of time. Over the last few years they've appeared on this blog at least a half dozen times.

No Bicycle Riding, Dude!

Hooded Merganser (Lophodytes cucullatus)

I mentioned yesterday the return of one of my favorite ducks, the Hooded Merganser (Lophodytes cucullatus). Above on the left is the female of the species with the male on the right. Females and young first-winter birds of both genders look very similar so I could be wrong. I was very happy to see a small flock (6) of these birds fairly close inshore yesterday since they have been fishing and flirting much further out since their arrival. However, as can be seen below, they weren't cooperating with the photographer otherwise. All of them were catching up on their sleep and it was a long wait before they perked up and took their heads out of their feathers.

Black Turnstone

As well as fall colors, another positive aspect of autumn is the return of many of the seabirds that spend the winter here after their summer breeding season in the north. The Black Turnstones (Arenaria melanocephala) pictured here breed only in Alaska during the summer and spend the winters further south on the Pacific Coast. Recently I have also welcomed the return of one of my favorite kinds of fish-duck, the Hooded Merganser (Lophodytes cucullatus). They also spend the summer further north for breeding and nesting.

Morning Fog

Fog rolled in from the Strait of Juan de Fuca this morning and obscured Shoal Point and James Bay. This photo was taken about an hour ago from the viewpoint in front of the Swallows Landing condominiums above the West Bay Walkway.

At Rest

On the West Bay Walkway.

Rhapsody of the Seas

While I'm back now from my holiday in Alberta, it may take me a few days to shift gears and get back into Victoria. In the meantime, here's a photo from a few weeks ago of the Rhapsody of the Seas being towed into her berth at Ogden Point. Amazing power in those tiny tugs. This photo was taken from my favorite walk along the West Bay Walkway.

Yellow 2

Just trying out a new feature of my camera here - it has a selective color function that allows you to select one color and renders everything else in black and white. As well as yellow one can select red, blue or green. It's an interesting effect that I wish I had remembered to try when photographing the crowds dressed in red on Canada Day. Oh well, there's always next year.

Bald Juvenile

This is a young Bald Eagle, spotted one morning a few weeks ago perched above the West Bay Walkway. He looks like a scruffy teenager though he's not more than two or three years old since the white head and tail of the adult bird comes with maturity around four years. Though he looks quite imperturbable, he was being buzzed mercilessly by a couple of crows and finally took off in search of a quieter place to take a break.

Gotcha!

I see these Great Blue Herons catching their food almost every day and I am always impressed by how seldom they miss. When they make that stab into the water they usually come up with something wriggling. However, until recently I haven't had a camera that could capture video as well as still photos. The Sony a55 I am now using does both. If you want to watch a Great Blue Heron catching his breakfast in High Definition video, the clip below is only 20 seconds long. Often the waiting and watching is five or ten minutes of concentrated immobility.

The Elusive Harlequin

Here are the latest fruits of my pursuit of the shy Harlequin Ducks (Histrionicus histrionicus) that have been occasionally hanging out along the shoreline of the West Bay Walkway. Generally as soon as they see me coming they start paddling away from the shore into deeper water. On this particular morning I was armed with a mid-range telephoto (Minolta 100-200mm zoom) and used a digital zoom feature on my Sony to double the magnification to the equivalent of 400mm. The result is a little fuzzy and dark (handheld and shooting into the sun) but is my best capture to date of these wonderfully colored and patterned little ducks. On the left is another characteristic of these sea ducks that makes them challenging to photograph. They spend a lot of time cruising with their heads under the water like snorkelers, just raising their heads for a second or two to take a breath from time to time and diving whenever they see something worth investigating more closely.

Urban Environment and Mindfulness

I am so happy to see the wildflowers announcing spring that I tend to forget I am in a very urban environment. So yesterday I took advantage of a very low tide to walk around underneath the footbridge on the West Bay Walkway and photograph its lovely arches. What does this have to do with mindfulness? Those of you who read this blog regularly may remember that I have been attempting for some time to capture a good photo of a particularly beautiful duck, the Harlequin Duck, which is generally as shy as it is attractive. I took about a dozen photos of this bridge but it wasn't until I got home and looked at the photos that I saw the pair of Harlequin Ducks swimming around only a short distance away from where I stood to take the photo above. You can see these elusive ducks in the lower left corner. This reminds me once again that I usually see not what is really there, but what I expect to see. On the left is another reminder that despite its wealth of flora and fauna, the West Bay Walkway is part of the urban environment and as well as passing through woods and along the seashore, it skirts these towers and others like them.

Wintry

Well, our snow is all gone this morning but winter's not relaxing its grip much. Here's a view from the West Bay Walkway looking towards Fisherman's Wharf and some of the resort hotels near Shoal Point.

Headless Heron

Actually this Great Blue Heron is just having a nap. It must be very convenient to be able to just tuck your head under a large wing whenever you want to shut out the world. But I don't know as I'd care to try it while balancing on a branch about 30 feet up in a tree. I have several times seen this heron snoozing like this above the West Bay Walkway near Sailor's Cove.

Seaweed

It seems that every few weeks the small beaches that line the West Bay Walkway are covered with dense drifts of seaweed. Sometimes it is just spaghetti-like tangles of giant kelp but other times it is the bright green lettuce-like weed pictured here. It can lie on the beach for several days or a week before changing tides and currents wash it away and often it becomes quite smelly. I suspect it would make good fertilizer if applied to the garden.

Lines

I originally took this photo from this odd angle in an attempt to show the frost crystals glistening on this handrail on the West Bay Walkway. The frost crystals don't show as much as I hoped but I like the picture anyway because of its strong lines and shapes. We're getting a lot of frost in the mornings now and if it gets cloudy we may even get a little more snow this year.

Glacial Grooves

I've mentioned before that the beaches on the western side of Victoria tend to be rocky rather than sandy. There are also many little rock islets just offshore. Many of them, such as this one, are grooved and rounded due to glacial grinding during the last ice age.

Crypsis

Crypsis (my new word for the day) means hiding and is used to refer to the camouflage employed by certain plants and animals to avoid predation by blending into the background. It might seem hard to apply this to the outstanding mushroom above but I will only mention that it is one a clump of about 75 big fat mushrooms that have been growing in plain sight for some time only a few steps off the West Bay Walkway. Despite my eagle-eyed pursuit of fungi, these guys passed unnoticed for a week or more because they are precisely the same color as autumn's fallen leaves and their clump, at a glance from above, just looks like a pile of leaves.

Westbay Wildlife

While I sort out some more photos of the recent Thetis Lake excursion here's a few more birds to add to the roll call of wildlife I've seen on the West Bay Walkway. Above is another shot of the Belted Kingfisher (Megaceryle alcyon). I see this bird almost every morning but he is generally perched high in a tree overlooking the water. And usually by the time I get all the gear out and ready he has spied his next meal and gone off to dive-bomb it. He has a very distinctive call that I now recognize, described in Peterson's Field Guide to Western Birds as "a loud high rattle." This means I see him much more often since his call alerts me to his location. To the left is a Common Goldeneye (Bucephala clangula), a diving duck that is wintering in these coastal waters along with the Hooded Mergansers and the Buffleheads.