Saturday Snapshots - January 7th 2017

Saturday Snapshots is a meme hosted by West Metro Mommy Reads. The rules of the game are:

To participate in Saturday Snapshot: post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken then leave a direct link to your post in the Mister Linky below. Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don’t post random photos that you find online.

Personally, I find that this is one of the most fun memes that I've participated in. Not to mention that it's a bit of an incentive to get out and take more photos every week!

All photos are new ones this week. I got out earlier in the week to do some birdwatching and photography - finally able to really test out the new 80-400mm lens, and I have to say I'm pretty happy with the results. Any remaining annoyance is pointed firmly at my need to improve my own skills, and not at the equipment (I need to learn to use manual focus properly - so as to ensure that the focus is on the right part of the bird (head and eye) rather than the branches around the bird or the wing or tail).

Anyway, these are the three that I'm most proud of:

All three were taken somewhere I'd driven by several times and not realized what it was. Buttertubs Marsh, Nanaimo.  I'm definitely going back there. It's a beautiful little walk - though the path was pretty icy this week. Lots of different birds too.

I saw some kind of hawk-type bird flying by, a male red-winged blackbird, spotted towhees, dark-eyed juncos, chickadees and assorted sparrows like the ones above. Not to mention a couple of American robins. What the heck. I'm going to add one more photo today:

I can't forget about the squirrels either. We saw quite a few of them. No waterfowl (ducks, geese, or swans) though. Not too surprising as the whole marsh was frozen more or less solid. I definitely want to go back through the year to watch the wildlife change as the birds come and go with the seasons.