Mavimet's Weblog

I spent the first 71 years of my life living in Winnipeg, Manitoba and the last 7 months in Chilliwack, British Columbia. Winters are completely different in these 2 provinces. In Manitoba, winter lasts for about 6 months. Many of the days have bright sunlight, but on the bright sunny days, the temperatures often plunge down to -30C and lower. When it isn’t sunny, it often snows. In this part of B.C. the temperatures get below 0C – but not by much. I believe -8C was the lowest it got in Chilliwack and the amount of snowfall was less than one inch although the 3 times it snowed might have brought up the total to one inch, and it always disappeared within a day or 2. The one thing is that we don’t get a lot of sunlight and we do get quite a bit of rain. I miss the sun, but I love looking out my window to see green grass in February.

Yesterday was a day when the sun came out, so I grabbed my camera and headed over to Chem Lake Wetlands for a walk. There are 3 trails there and I walked all 3 of them. It was a gorgeous day!

The first trail was a circle trail that starts and ends on the left side of the water – actually, winding in between a few other ponds along the way. The first birds I heard were Red-winged Blackbirds. They were all perched and singing for the females – although I didn’t see any of the females. I guess they were practicing for when the girls made it there.

Back quite a bit further, I saw a large bird landing on top of a tree. I thought it must be an Eagle, so I zoomed over there and saw that it was a Bald Eagle. My first photo was not zoomed in all the way (luckily). Then I zoomed in closer to get a better photo of him. I did not see the 2nd Eagle on a lower branch until I returned home and uploaded the photos to my PC. This must be one of last years young ones.

Thinking there was only one in the tree, I zoomed in closer on the one that I had seen landing near the top of the tree.

I continued walking and found a few Canada Geese swimming in a pond beside the trail.

The trail was in great shape on this day and I didn’t have to wade through snow or water or even a muddy trail.

I met a few people coming off the trail when I was going in, but otherwise, I had the whole trail to myself.

Oh and the tree in about the centre of the above photo appears to have an eagle nest near the top. Although I did not realize it at the time, there may also be an eagle a couple of branches below the nest. Unfortunately, since I was aiming at the mountains, the nest & tree are not focused enough to say for sure. I have zoomed in on it a bit for a little better view (even though not focused).