Four Seasons in Four Weeks – Birding Calgary in Fall 2016

Birding this past month in the Calgary area has – due to a variety of weather patterns – presented a lot of opportunities to photograph many species under different conditions. A particular favorite of mine is the always striking Wood Duck:

An increasing number of Wood Ducks have taken up seasonal residence at the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary and, being only 15 minutes’ drive from where I live, I have made a number of trips to photograph these beauties…

On sunny days I try to go either early in the morning, or late in the afternoon when the sun is slow in the sky. On fall mornings the Sanctuary is particularly beautiful: As their name suggests, the Wood Ducks spend a lot of time perched on fallen dead trees in the lagoon and they seem just as happy there as in the water:

Although there does definitely seem to be some competition for the ‘best’ spots:

A goal of mine this year was to try and capture some in-flight shots of Wood Ducks and I’ve been lucky enough to get a number of opportunities to try my hand at this, and the results have been personally pleasing:

Some Woodies appear to have paired up…

…while others seem to be chasing each other around:

Watching them preen and clean can also be an action-packed sight:

And if the Wood Ducks aren’t enough for you, often times you can get a rowdy Belted Kingfisher flying up and down the lagoon making its harsh rattling call.

A very skittish bird, I managed to get some of best shots yet of one that decided to perch unexpectedly close for a good minute:

Some mornings can be quite foggy, which presents its own beauty…

But fall being fall, the weather can change quite dramatically and snowfall is not unexpected…

Although this didn’t seem to faze the Wood Ducks at all:

However, some late-staying Great Blue Herons didn’t seem quite so enamored:

As I was leaving on this wintry morning, I caught a shape in the treeline out of the corner of my eye…

Which upon closer inspection turned out to be a juvenile Bald Eagle, but it didn’t stick around long…

…although it was obliging enough to do a nice fly-by past me:

Some other species present included some American Wigeon: 

The ubiquitous Mallard: 

And a Northern Flicker: 

Despite some brief snowfall in early October, it has been relatively warm (into the teens in celsius)  and so I took advantage of the good driving conditions and made a trip out to the foothills west of Calgary where I came across a couple dozen southward-bound majestic Trumpeter Swans in some ponds by the highway:

But alas I didn’t see too many birds in the foothills themselves save for this American Pipit:

I also made the effort to check out several other ponds used by migrating waterfowl and came across some of the ‘usual suspects’ such as Northern Shoveller:

And last, but not least, some water-walking Common Goldeneye that may decide to over-winter:

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