Sea Turtles

Akumel (where we were diving) means "place of turtles" in Mayan. And we have seen turtles on almost every dive. They also seemed less afraid people. Other places turtles tend to swim away as soon as they see you.

The turtles often had shark sucker remoras with them. They didn't seem to be attached, just hanging around.

Sea turtles are actually quite graceful swimmers.

Most of the ones we saw were Green Turtles, but looking at my photos afterwards, I realized one had been a Hawksbill. The main difference is the shape of their head and beak.

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Abkhazi Garden

Abkhazi Garden is one of my favorites in Victoria. Despite being small, there always seems to be something interesting to photograph.

Soon after we entered the garden today I spotted this Goldenrod Crab Spider with a fly it had caught. They generally vary in color from white to yellow. This one was quite pale yellow.

And fall is the time to see more Cross Orbweavers.

There are some beehives in the garden and honey bees were busy visiting flowers while they lasted.

There were still quite a few flowers around. These autumn crocuses look a lot like the spring ones.

I liked the pattern of leaves on this succulent.

The sun wasn't quite warm enough for the turtles to be out sunning, but this one was quite active swimming around and occasionally sticking its head out to look around.

At one point I heard a bird call that sounded vaguely familiar. Shelley spotted it high up at the top of a dead tree. From the dark spot on its neck I thought it might be a Northern Flicker and the telephoto lens confirmed it. Usually you see Flickers on the ground rather than perched in trees. The angle from below revealed why they're called red-shafted.

King's Pond

In a short video about fancy ducks in Victoria, they went to King's Pond to see Wood Ducks. I'd actually run by this pond, but I hadn't looked past the masses of Mallards. So Shelley and I stopped by when we were in the area. Typically, someone was feeding the ducks so there were lots of them on the path. But sure enough, amidst all the Mallards were a few Wood Ducks. This one came straight towards us and into the water.

There were some great reflections in the water to give them a nice background. (Although there was a lot of debris floating in the water, so it wasn't as clean a background as I would have liked.)

I'm not sure if this guy was showing off for the females or to intimidate the other males. (As usual with birds, the males are the flashy ones.) Nice pattern on the underside of the wings.

There were also a few American Wigeons around. Pretty feathers on their backs.

And some very active Ring-necked Ducks. They're also known as "ring bills" because the ring around the bill is much more noticeable than the cinnamon colored ring around their neck.

There were also some turtles out sunning themselves on a log. (According to a sign, the log was installed by volunteers, specifically for the turtles.)

This one was right at the edge of the path where I could get a good closeup.

Unfortunately, these turtles (red-eared sliders) are a non-native invasive species. Until recently they were all released pets, which explains why I've never seen really small ones. But apparently they have started to breed in southern Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland. This wouldn't be so bad except they are out-competing the native Western Painted Turtles.

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Tortugario Ecologico

When we were navigating to Manzanillo, I noticed I had marked a location on Google Maps - Tortugario Ecologico, just south of Manzanillo. We had time, so we decided to stop and see what it was. It appears to be a combination of public displays, conservation, and research. The main subjects are sea turtles, american crocodiles, and green iguanas, as well as the lagoon and mangroves themselves.



Some of the turtles appeared injured. Possibly all of them were rescued? They might have been raising some of the juveniles to a larger size to have a better chance of surviving after release.



It's nice to be able to look at them close up. When we see turtles scuba diving, they're generally disappearing into the distance. Or at the least swimming around.



We only saw one juvenile crocodile. I love the eyes!



Humorously, a lizard (whiptail?) ran by the baby crocodile while I was taking photos.



There were also a couple of adult crocodiles. I get a kick out of their crooked teeth, and their lumpy skin. That juvenile has some growing to do!



There were some captive adult iguanas. Apparently they catch the females when they are likely to be carrying eggs. Then they can recover the eggs after they are laid, and raise the baby iguanas to a bigger size before releasing them. The helps their survival rate since the young are the most vulnerable.



After wandering the exhibits, we found a boardwalk through the mangroves. Shelley managed to spot a wild juvenile iguana (maybe one of the ones they released?). They are such a bright green they don't seem very well camouflaged against the dead brown leaves. Presumably they would blend in better in the foliage.



The center isn't anything fancy, but if you're in the area and you enjoy this kind of thing, I'd recommend it.

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Invermere

Here's my last batch of photos from in and around Invermere. With Shelley's sprained ankle we couldn't walk too far, but we enjoyed a couple of meanders around Dorothy Lake near Kinsmen Beach. (We also enjoyed lunch at nearby Cafe Allium sitting on their patio with a view of the lake.)

A Great Blue Heron was busy catching its own lunch.



These two Painted Turtles seemed to be in a standoff.



This muskrat cooperated by pausing to be photographed.



It's nice to see lots of osprey nesting.



Of course, being around water, I couldn't resist a few reflection shots.



One of the reasons we came to Invermere was that it's one of the top places in the world for sailplanes (gliders) and we wanted to add to our flying experiences. We had great hour long flights with Trevor at Soar the Rockies. I even got to try taking over the controls and flying it for a bit. It was quite different flying 120 km/hr in a high performance sailplane with a glide ratio of 40:1, compared to a paraglider at 35 km/hr with a glide ration of 8:1. Then again, my paraglider fits in a backpack and I can hike up a mountain, launch, and land almost anywhere. Sailplanes are normally towed up by another (powered) airplane and land at an airstrip. It was cool getting up high enough to see Mt. Assiniboine in the distance. (See also Shelley's post about our flights.)



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Columbia River

We enjoyed paddling from Invermere to Radium with kayak rentals and shuttle by Columbia River Paddle.



Although it was mostly cloudy, there were enough patches of sun to lure a few painted turtles into view.



I'm not sure if this merganser was on a nest or just relaxing.



Kayaking isn't the best for photographing insects, but this damselfly landed on my kayak so I grabbed a few shots. (this is actually two shots focus stacked)



One of the highlights of the trip was seeing bald eagles, since we don't see them much in Saskatoon. Taking photos of birds in flight is always a challenge, and being in a moving kayak doesn't help, but if you take enough shots, sometimes you get lucky. The first is a juvenile, who doesn't have the white head yet.





It's a little easier when they're sitting still, except the kayak is still moving!





Towards the end of the paddle, Shelley noticed a bald eagle on the shore and as we got closer we saw it was quite wet and had a fish. Later some other kayakers told us they had seen it struggle to catch the fish.





A couple of magpies were hanging around hoping for scraps.



See also Shelley's post

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