In some previous posts I have discussed how aggressive the red-winged blackbirds can be towards the great blue herons. The herons are quite happy to eat the chicks of the blackbirds, so the aggression is justified. One of the herons was flying in my direction when a blackbird swooped down at it. It came in from above and behind and started to attack the heron. I got a sequence of shots as this evolved and my favorite is one where it actually looks like the blackbird is riding the heron. If only it had some reins!
Friday evening after work, the sun was out and, with the time having changed, it wasn’t getting dark too early. I decided to have a stroll down at Juanita Bay Park before going home. Of course, the camera came with me. Things were pretty quiet, and I was taking a few photos but decided it was time to head home. As I turned to walk back, I saw a friend of mine, Lee, walking towards me. I was about to greet him when he started running towards me and called out “otters”!
I turned around a pair of otters were swimming across the bay towards us. They came towards the little island area and climbed out on to the shore. It is a bit difficult to get a shot there, but I managed a few. They moved along the shore and then back into the water. They headed out to the middle of the bay. Clearly, they were planning on hunting so we gave them a little time. A short while later, one appeared on the surface with what looked like a fish.
Often, when the otters have a catch, they go to a buoy to eat it but, this time, they seemed to be heading back our way. I was hoping that they would come up on the beach to eat. Amazingly, that’s exactly what they did. However, it wasn’t a fish that they had caught. It was a duck of some sort. One of them had caught it and it didn’t seem interested in sharing too much. It proceeded to chomp down on its meal.
The sound of a otter’s teeth crunching the skull of a duck was hard to miss as it made it’s way through its meal. The second otter was keen to share but the first one would the carcass up and turn around to try and avoid the interloper. This was repeated several times. In due course, it decided it was done and just left the remains. I suspect some bits just aren’t that tasty. While I did get stills, the eating process was far more interesting as video, so I shot more of that. The feathers everywhere looked quite funny as they got stuck on the otter’s head while it ripped into the body.
Plenty of people walk their dogs in Juanita Bay Park. They do not always like the areas because the decking is pierced steel and is a bit harsh on their paws. This dog wasn’t bothered, though. Instead, it seemed more intent on finding a way to get into the shore area which was out of bounds. Watching it starting out under the fencing, I felt a little sorry for it!
(British spelling for this title!). Really no deep insight from today’s post. I was photographing the wildlife at Juanita Bay and a bunch of the ducks were busy feeding. They would take it in turns as they dipped their heads underwater and stuck their tails up in the air. Then, at one point, they all went under together. Is it a good use of my time to be watching ducks sticking their arses in the air?
Until I started spending some time in Juanita Bay with other photographers and bird watchers, I had never heard the word leucistic. There is a leucistic sparrow that hangs out in the bay and is popular with the locals. Apparently, this is a creature with light pigmentation. It is not an albino but it has a lot of white in it. This sparrow was hanging around in some of the trees near the trail as I walked by. I figured it would rapidly disappear when I stopped but it wasn’t terribly bothered by me and was far more interested in whatever it was eating. It is a rather interesting looking bird.
We had some pretty stormy weather come through the Seattle area at the end of 2022. When I took a walk through the park at Juanita, I drove past a tree hanging over one lane of the road. Once I got to the park, there were trees down in places. Even the parking lot was showing that it had been breezy with debris scattered across the road surface. They cleaned things up pretty quickly but it had obviously been rather blowy.
The winter is a good time for swans to show up back in Juanita Bay. They are there to eat and rest so are not always the most fun to shoot but sometimes they will get a bit more active. There is a bank of silt in the bay where they can stand and rest so having nothing happen for long periods of time is not impossible. I was there one Sunday morning and they were eating quite close to the shore. However, it was winter and, while the sun was out, they were in the shade.
Every once in a while, some of them would get energetic and I could get some shots of them taking off and flying towards each other. I’m not sure how competitive this all was since things never got terribly aggressive but they did seem to be sparring half-heartedly. A whole family came in to the bay at one point but, rather than flying in when the light was very nice, they just swam in. A touch disappointing but it is nature photography. What can you do?
A few times recently I have been down at Juanita Bay Park when the eagles have been hunting. While everyone thinks of bald eagles eating fish, they are also happy to eat birds if available. We have had large flocks of coots on the lake and they are a plentiful food source. They stay close together on the surface but, when the eagles fly close, the flocks will get startled and start fluttering around as they try to evade the predators.
The eagles are not bothered about the flock. They just want to isolate one of the birds which they can then take out. They will swoop around until they can take out one bird which they then land on top of and sit on it while it drowns. Once it has stopped moving, they take off and carry it back to the pole in the bay where they can eat at their leisure.
Before you eat a coot, you need to pluck it. The eagles make quick work of this and, with a breeze blowing, the air is quickly filled with feathers as they clean up their kill. Once that is done, time to tuck in to dinner. A coot is quickly eaten and then they fly off to a log to wash up before retiring to a tree to rest and digest. If there is anything left of the carcass, you can guarantee that the crows will be paying close attention and will close in to take care of matters.
I was walking back to the car in the park when I saw the light on this one tree making it look really attractive in the evening conditions. I only had the 500mm with me so there was only one option. Time to shoot a pano and stitch the whole thing together when I got home. Handholding a pano with the 500mm is not ideal but it seemed to work out okay.
There are some kingfishers that live around Juanita Bay but I have never previously been even remotely close to them. They seemed to live around the outlet of the creek and head straight out into the bay so they were but a speck from where I was. However, for some reason, a pair of them were out and about. When I was on one pier, one flew right past me and I was too slow to realize what it was. However, luck was on my side.
It was heading for another one over the other side of the inlet and they then started spiraling around before heading back towards me and then straight overhead. I was lucky enough to get a few shots of them as they went by. I headed around the inlet later on and they were flying again. This time one landed on the deck where I had previously been. No doubt, that wouldn’t have happened if anyone had still been there but it was funny to see.
In some previous posts I have discussed how aggressive the red-winged blackbirds can be towards the great blue herons. The herons are quite happy to eat the chicks of the blackbirds, so the aggression is justified. One of the herons was flying in my direction when a blackbird swooped down at it. It came in from above and behind and started to attack the heron. I got a sequence of shots as this evolved and my favorite is one where it actually looks like the blackbird is riding the heron. If only it had some reins!
