Christmas Day turned out to be surprisingly nice out, considering the coming snow and cold. Shelley and I even got some sunshine on our walk.
Recently I discovered where a Great Blue Heron likes to sit. It's quite close to the path, but barely visible through the tree branches. However, you get a clear view from across the bay (with a telephoto lens). It seems to be there most days.
A chance shot of a gull taking off into the wind with the Empress Hotel in the background.
One of our local river otters on their favorite grassy spot right in front of some condos. (Despite living in the ocean, these are not "sea otters".)
Usually hummingbirds are skittish and will fly away if you get anywhere near. But this one seemed content to sit on his perch beside the busy path and let us take photos. It would fly off to one of the nearby condo balcony feeders and then return to this same branch. Their iridescence colors are structural rather than pigmented, formed by the reflection of light from microscopic layers of air bubbles in their feathers. Most of my photos didn't catch much color.
But an occasional lucky shot would show their brilliant colors.
It's amazing that hummingbirds can live here in the winter. Although there are a few flowers still around, they don't seem like enough to feed the fast metabolism of hummingbirds. These Anna's hummingbirds will also eat insects, but there's not a lot of them around either. It's only in the last 60 years that they have expanded from California to as far north as British Columbia - likely a combination of global warming and more urban flowers and hummingbird feeders.
The windy weather has been blowing the kelp onto the beach. I like the color and patterns it makes.
Often the Double-crested cormorants sit on these pilings with their wings outspread to dry. But it was too windy for that today. I caught this one just as it was getting ready to take off.
We're lucky we went for our walk on Christmas day. As I write this on Boxing day we're getting the predicted snow, wind, and cold temperatures. (Although -20 windchill doesn't sound "extreme" to someone recently from Saskatchewan.) I hope the hummingbirds are managing to survive in the snow.
These photos were all taken with my Olympus E-M1 m3 and Panasonic 100-400mm (200-800 equivalent) telephoto. Although its older, smaller (2x crop factor) sensor is not leading edge, I love the small size and versatility. I would say it's my favorite camera of the ones I've had so far.
