Chichester Wetland Park, Kelowna

Lone female bufflehead duck at Chichester Wetland Park.

Today I visited a wetland I had not been to before.  I learned of it last week and decided to go today to see what there was.  The park is located in the Rutland area of Kelowna, BC and was easy to get to.  It is surrounded by suburbia, but that did not seem to diminish the presence of wildlife.  Upon arriving, the first thing I witnessed was a Merlin chasing down a small songbird of some sort.  A burst of feathers was a testament to the hawk's intentions.

There were a lot of mallards, perhaps over a hundred.  About half the pond was frozen over; the ducks were either in the open water or foraging on land.  The only other waterfowl present was a solitary bufflehead duck.  I photographed it with my 500mm and 1.4x teleconverter.  The gray day did not help with my shutter speed, as I shot at 1/125th of a second using an ISO of 200 and a fully opened aperture at f/8 (includes the extra stop from the TC).  

I also photographed a few flickers that were taking some form of seed off a tree.  I have not been able to identify the type of tree it is - if you know the species can you please let me know.  I am including a photo below.

Male flicker eating tree nuts (or seeds) of some type.

I had the company of a friend while I was there and enjoyed the entire outing.  The weather was cool but there was no wind.  It was a beautiful day for it.  I hope to visit it again when spring finally comes; there should be a lot more variety of birds present then.

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com

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