Capturing predator/prey relationship

To capture wildlife in photos or videos, getting to the wildlife is usually the first obstacle. With a bit of research in understanding where the animal might be, it's a matter of just going to the same place. Sometimes, you get lucky on the first try, and other times you need multiple attempts just to see the animal.

Capturing their behaviour is the next challenge.  Hunting behaviour requires both the predator and prey not being distracted by a human, so normally requires some stealth on the part of the observer (us). 

Wildlife films have made us accustomed to witnessing a successful hunt, but in reality, many hunts end up empty handed.  Last week, I saw seals catch wild fish for the first time, and today, I witnessed another predator prey interaction.

It started off as another quiet day of birding at Boundary Bay.  After about an hour, I started settling for photos of sparrows, lest I leave empty handed.  As we drove away, I noticed parked cars along 72nd St, with several photographers aiming their cameras at what I initially thought were eagles atop telephone poles.  In fact, it was a red-tailed hawk, whose gaze seemed fixed on the tall grass below.

It pounced down into the grass, and I had no idea whether it succeeded until it started flying off, vole in beak.

It wasn't until I looked at the images afterwards that I could confirm that the hawk's hunt was successful - all this happened in the span of a few seconds.  An unexpected reward at the end of what could've been an uneventful outing had we left just a few minutes earlier.

River otters at Terra Nova pond

A couple of river otters in the Terra Nova pond

 

The life that salmon sustains

For the last month or so, we've been visiting salmon streams to witness salmon spawning, but have been largely unsuccessful seeing them in smaller streams where I could plunk down a camera. Today, we visited a sunny, but cold and windy Squamish to try our luck there.  The activity by the river confirmed the presence of salmon.

First stop was at Brackendale Eagles Provincial Park. November to December are the best times to see hundreds of bald eagles, feasting on salmon. We were a little early in the season, and we saw few eagles, though the gusty winds might have had something to do with that.  We did see some unexpected visitors - harbour seals.  Here they are, about 5 km away from the ocean.

There were at least three in the water. It was certainly unusual to see them swimming amidst such strong currents.

No need for the seals to steal fish - there were plenty to go around

Caught one!

Herons

Common Merganser (m)

Common Merganser (f)

I'm curious what the mergansers were after...maybe salmon roe trickling past?  Or maybe they're permanent residents, going after small fish that reside in the shallows.

Next, we visited to the Mamquam Spawning channels.  We walked past a golf course to find clear water providing great visibility of the spawning salmon. Most were chum, but I saw a couple of pinks as well.

Link to video, since the video isn't showing up on mobile devices

Went crabbing...technically a success

This past weekend, we took advantage of the summer low tides to take our kids out exploring the muddy beaches.

I had mild ambitions of snorkeling for crab, but with young kids in tow, the best kinds of plans are those that are flexible.

With a spade in hand, we were on the lookout for large holes in the sand. The larger, the higher our expectations, and this hole was as wide as a thumb. We dug down to elbows, yielded this creature, a horse clam.

Inside the clam, we found not one, but two pea crabs.

We've seen pea crabs pretty frequently in larger bivalves, and even in store-bought kiwi mussels. They stow away in the clams as protection.  They offer the clams nothing in return, and may even irritate them in a way that retards the clams' growth, so they are regarded as parasites.  Females will live in the same host for life, while the males (which make up about 17% of the population) will migrate between clams, seeking to mate.

Apparently, pea crabs are fully edible, but it would take even my adventurous tastebuds a bit of coaxing to down one of these.

Here, you may observe the sexual dimorphism between the male (left) and probably gravid female (right).

New Year's Day owling

A dry, sunny day has interrupted what has been a mostly wet week.  It so happens it was the first day of the decade as well, which meant lots of people enjoying a walk on the Dyke Trail on Boundary Bay.  The short-eared owls were also putting on a show...at least a half-dozen individuals prowled the marshes.

Checking out the juvenile bald eagle

No, your monitor's not fuzzy. For some reason, every photo came out fuzzy, at every aperture level, and it's not a focus issue. Yes, this is a cheap lens, but it's the same cheap lens I've always used, and today was worse than usual. I'll have to run some tests to see what part of the hardware is at fault.