Two days into 2010 I took a trip into the Fraser Valley. I don't like to do a lot of driving but decided to take advantage of a minor spot of good weather to visit a place I'd read about in the news. Nicomen Island is a flat piece of farmland bounded on two sides by the Fraser River and by a tributary called Nicomen Slough. For some reason, it is a chosen spot by both Bald Eagles and Trumpeter Swans Cygnus buccinator to overwinter. Apparently, there were some recent killings of the swans ("Swans shot at Nicomen Slough") so I decided to check it out before they moved on (trumpeter swans are a protected species and no hunting of them is permitted).

Nicomen Island is near Hatzic (Mission is the larger town near by) in the Fraser Valley. From my home base in Vancouver it is about an hour and a half of highway driving to get there. On this last day of holidays there was little traffic getting out of the Lower Mainland and once you get across the Pitt River the view becomes very nice. In the winter air you can see clear across to the end of the valley and the flatness of the farmland between the mountains means all the mountains are in view with little haze in between.

In the three hours I spent driving around Nicomen -- it is bisected by Lougheed Highway (7) -- I counted about six individual bald eagles and a flock of a dozen impressive trumpeter swans. Most of the swans were hanging out along sand banks in Nicomen Slough but would occasionally take off to browse nearby fields. The swans had no real reason to fear the eagles -- the swans probably outweigh the eagles significantly -- but both kept a respectful distance from each other. The pair below were eyeing the nearby eagle (next picture) warily.

I shot all of these with the Canon 100-400L. At medium distances -- as in the first shot of the roosting eagle -- it is sharp enough. At longer distances using the 2X teleconverter, the resolution does suffer, even in ideal conditions such as when I had it mounted on a tripod. With flying pictures I panned with my body -- I'm just not that used to panning with the tripod and did not find a really good shooting position besides. I suspect that will take a whole day of scouting to find that.

Most of the bird shots I took were just off the highway -- but the location suffers from not having good places to pull aside or decent access to the bank that I could find in the time I had. The place is a destination for anglers so the next time I'm there I should just follow the people with the rods and reels.

I also shot some large format and black & white 35mm that is waiting for my photo lab to open before I can see the results.

Links

• In my research I found this blog entry by Birding by Shantz useful before I drove out there.
• Abbotsford Times: "Swans shot at Nicomen Slough"
• Hinterland's Who's Who: Trumpeter Swans
• Digital Picture: Canon EF 100-400 f/4.5 - 5.6L IS USM lens review