Confession : I have absolutely no knowledge of birds. When I see something flying , I can make the difference between a bird and a plane, but that is about the end of my ornithological expertise. As you can guess, you won’t find me hiding in the bushes, early in the morning, dressed in anorak and armed with binoculars, hoping to spot a common linnet, a robin or a house-martin. Unlike children, birds should be heard (or eaten) and not seen, that’s my opinion.
But during our stay in Canada, I started noticing birds. They resembled Dutch/European birds, but there were differences. Except for the canada goose, which is a familiar winter guest in the Netherlands (and I believe some geese have stopped migrating completely and are now staying all year round), most birds we saw were new, more colorfull, or larger. And so gradually my interest in our feathered friends grew, and I started to take pictures of them.
My new interest got a real boost at the Nature Bay Wildlife Sanctuary in Salmon Arm. Here, on the shores of the Shuswap Lake, tucked away between the water and the railroad, lies a small stretch of marshland with an abundance of birds. Once in a while a train rumbles past, but otherwise the sanctuary is an oasis of silence, where only the sounds of nature are heard.Wind rustling through gently swaying reeds, small waves breaking on the shore, and lots and lots of birds fluting, quacking, whistling and so on.
Funnily enough, the poster image of this wildlife paradise is a bird that is a very familiar site in The Netherlands, but is nurtured here as an endangered species, the blue heron. In Amsterdam, the blue heron is totally adapted to life in a big city. But in Salmon Arm, the only heron I saw was shy and kept a safe distance from us. Later I learned that this heron is a subspecies of the heron family, the great blue heron, where the Dutch variety is plainly called the blue heron. Even with names of birds, everything is bigger in Canada, apparently.
The Salmon Arm sanctuary is a great place for watching birds. The bright colors, the different singing and their natural behavior where fun to watch. A highlight was the osprey, which landed in a treetop, scarring all the geese and their ducklings. They immediately fled into the reed lands, protected by their parents, leaving the osprey plaintively squealing in his high lookout.
In the forest near Wapta Falls I found another bird, rustling about between the fallen leaves and branches. First I thought it was an ordinary stray chicken. It looked a bit like that, but when it came closer, I could see there was a difference. I took some pictures, before the bird noticed me and flew up on to a low hanging branch of a tree. It was a spruce grouse, I could determine later.
Although I had fun, I don’t think bird watching will be my new hobby. I don’t have the patience needed to wait for the bird to sit perfectly still, and hearing a bird whistle or seeing it fly doesn’t excite me enough. But I took some great pictures that I would like to share with you. I couldn’t name every bird (or maybe I made a mistake), so please feel free to fill in the blanks.
Voor meer informatie over:
Salmon Arm Bay Bird watching : Klik hier
Salmon Arm Bay Nature Enhancement Society klik hier
This is the third in a series of articles with photo’s I took on a trip from Calgary to Victoria and back, through the Rocky Mountains, in May 2015.
Weblog van Jan Morsch 