Saturday 2/5: Lewis, Cowlitz and Clark counties

American Kestrels - nearly everywhere I went on
Saturday afternoon!

My plan for Saturday afternoon was to get a good start on Lewis, Cowlitz and Clark counties.  I'll be swinging through all of them again in June, so it was okay if I didn't get 39 birds in any of them.  Finished with 30 plus in each, however.  I didn't see a lot of birds I was hoping to see, but had some nice surprises along the way.

Lewis County

On the North end of Centralia, I took Goodrich Road and looked for birds along the way.  A lot of interesting ones had been posted here during the last week, and I missed nearly all of them!  Still, between farms, flooded fields and feeders, there was a lot to see.  Goodrich Pond at the very end had a lot of dabbling ducks, as well as a flock of 100 or so Dunlin, and a dozen Trumpeter Swans on the far shore.  A kestrel perched on a far post, and Western Scrub-jays were calling from the farms on the other side of the road.  Gulls were on the far side of the pond as well, but I'm not great at ID'ing them at that distance.  Still picked out Mew and Ring-billed.


Peregrine Falcon - Wagner Road, Lewis County

 After I had been there a little bit, I was joined by a couple who were quite serious birders.  They have some similar, but more ambitious goals - namely to see 175 birds in every county in the state!  (Not in one year, mind you, but for their life lists in the counties) They are well on their way, but once you've seen 100... 150.. in a county, you're working to find rarer and rarer birds to add to the list.  One of them they had found around the corner from the pond was a Peregrine Falcon - a bit unusual for Lewis County.  I swung back around on my way out and found it, although I was unable to find the White-throated Sparrow they had seen at a feeder.  On the way out of town, I stopped at Fort Borst Park - which is part recreational, part historical, including this one-room schoolhouse.

Cowlitz County


The rest stop at the north end of Cowlitz - I believe it is always raining here...

My big stop heading through Cowlitz County was the Woodland area, where I was hoping to find Sandhill Cranes (nope).  While I didn't find them, I was treated to a pretty good raptor show, with American Kestrels, Red-tailed Hawks, a Northern Harrier and a Rough-legged Hawk.  The roughie is a new-ish bird for me.  I saw my first one in Mid-December last year outside of Fall City in King County (the 200th bird I found in the county last year - a fun pursuit that I wish I had documented better!).  This time, I enjoyed more of the field marks in binoculars before it flew farther away.  I got a very poor picture of it - not even worth tossing in here!  American Pipits were playing around in the mud in the fields below the road as well - first ones I've seen this year.


Barn - Woodland Bottoms - Cowlitz County



Eurasian Collared-doves

 I also found a pair of Eurasian Collared-doves as I went around the dike.  These are doves that just weren't here ten years ago.  There were some introduced in Florida, and since then, they've been spreading and spreading and spreading.  Are they the bird equivalent of English Ivy?  Haven't a clue... but I'm watchin' em!  Made my way out of Cowlitz County craneless... sigh.  May catch 'em later in Eastern Washington - we shall see.




Clark County

Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge - Clark County

I've visited Ridgefield before, but there are so many good birds there, I had to make this my stop before finishing out my day (it was already 3 or so).  Took the auto route and found lots of dabblers along the way.  There is one stop where you can park the car and walk up to a blind to observe swans (usually Tundra), geese and ducks on the lake.  There have been reports of a Black Phoebe here all winter - missed that, but was amazed to see Barn and Tree Swallows already circling over one of the flooded fields.


Northern Shoveler - Ridgefield NWR



 This picture I can't really explain, although I'm sure someone knows what this is - the river running through here was completely red.  Couldn't really get over to check it out, but it had me puzzled, and I couldn't find anything about it on the Google (the fact that there is a Red River does not help...)

Finished the tour with the American Kestrel below.  Same one as the top.  It was on the post at the very end of the auto route, and people all stopped to get a good shot of it.  Didn't seem to scare it off.

Now I was hungry, and although I had thought to restrict myself to local restaurants... I felt myself pulled in by (in the words of T.S. Spivet - the fictitious 12 year old genius cartographer created by Reif Larsen) "The McAwesome Trident of Desire"



From The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen

As it got dark, and I made my way to the house of another college friend (how lucky I am to have refound him) I saw the high school reader board below, and had to get a shot.  Something similar to come in Wahkiakum county in the next post.  Gotta love small towns.



Saturday 2/5 Thurston County



Sunrise from Military Road - Thurston County

 Spent Friday evening with dear friends in.... well.. they're really not in anything.  Kind of Yelm, kind of southeast of Olympia.  Out there a litte, anyway in a house that they built themselves, on a large piece of land.  Great to spend an evening with them - really so close (an hour or two?) but everyday takes you away from people sometimes.  Nice visit.

Saturday AM was magnificent.  Let me explain a bit here.  There is a listserve out there called Tweeters.  It has nothing to do with Tweeting, and was around long before.  It's a place where people post interesting bird sightings, or have other related conversations (right now there's one percolating about what our state bird ought to be - there may be interest in changing it from the American Goldfinch to Great Blue Heron.  My vote is for Varied Thrush).  So they have a searchable archive, and I was interested in owls I might find in this area - through the search I found the name of a gentleman from Tenino.  I emailed him and waited a day, two.. three days... figured that I'd just have to poke around myself.  Then I got a four page email from him with information on this road where he goes owling (Vantine Road - coming up here), and information on 5-10 other places he goes walking around there and what birds he's found.  Made me think back to my first day of the year, and the joy that comes from knowing all of the little corners in your own place.  He was happy to do it, and called it 'vicarious birding'.

 

Not quite sunrise - Vantine Road



So - 6:30 AM, Vantine Road.  I drove a short ways up the road, got out of the car, and heard a Great Horned Owl hooting away.  Enjoyed this for a bit, and tried to converse with him to bring him in closer.  Eventually left, but it turns out that I heard a GHO at every stop I made along the 2 mile road that morning!  By far the best stop was about a mile and a half up the road.  I had three different kinds of birds making a racket of very different sorts:

Northern Saw-whet Owls were tooting away (think of the whistle of a saw blade being sharpened - the cadence being kind of like a garbage truck backing up) - three of them at a time, which was more than I'd ever heard at once.  Very very cool.

Virgina rails were also very loud down below.  How to describe their calls... imagine a pig trying to do an imitation of a mallard when they do that descending QUACK Quack Quack quack quack.  Who knows how many of them were doing that all at once.

Marsh wrens were adding to this.  Chattering and clicking madly with the other groups of birds doing their thing.  Wish I had audio for y'all.  It was something else.  Here's a picture of where I was - a bit dark down this little valley, but it was the backrop for all of this crazy noise.


Weir Prairie



Backtracked at this point along Military Road (sunrise picture above), and headed for the Weir Prairie.  A) I've never been to any of the prairies in the sound, and 2) although it's early, they miiigghhht have bluebirds.  No on bluebirds, but what a lovely place.  Mentioned in the last post how great it is that we can raise/grow so much food in our state.  One of the trade-offs is losing places like this.  A lot of the west side prairies were converted to farmland and pasture, but this place is still pretty intact.  Would love to come in the summer when the flowers are in bloom and some prairie birds like bluebirds and Vesper Sparrows have come back.

Made my way back to Tenino (tuh-NINE-oh...so bad when I've said a town in my head the wrong way more than I've heard it the right way...) and went up some back roads looking for Ruffed Grouse - nope.  Then visited a feeder that Paul had encouraged me to visit... strooongly encouraged me to visit!  Didn't actually visit the feeder - the owner wasn't at home - but from the road:  Song Sparrow, Fox Sparrow, Dark-eyed Junco, Mourning Dove, Steller's Jay, Western Scrub-Jay, Black-capped Chickadee, Chestnut-backed Chickadee, and the bird of the day - a Harris' Sparrow!



Harris' Sparrow - Tenino

 These guys are hard to come by.  They mostly hang out in the middle of the US, but some get a little lost.  The first one I ever saw was at my feeder a few years back, and it had me scrambling for my field guides - at first, I just figured there was something very wrong with the House Sparrow I was looking at, but eventually got it figured out.  When it was at my feeder, I posted on Tweeters offering directions if people asked.  Interesting balance there - wanting to share birds with people, but not necessarily wanting a lot of people in your backyard! 

Finished by visiting Paul's feeder where I got a good look at a Varied Thrush.  Did I mention that was my favorite bird?  Yes?  Okay, good.  Then made my way out of Thurston County, having seen 60 species between the two days.  So many places I hadn't been!  Mima Mounds (beautiful place, nicknamed "The Pimpled Prairie" because of the strange mounds; Olympia; Capitol Forest (where they've got interesting things like Hermit Warblers and Mountain Quail, and other muddy places where they'll have shorebirds later.  I'll have this longing to return with a lot of the counties I'm sure.

Next post will be Lewis/Cowlitz/Clark, and then Wahkiakum and I'm caught up!

Friday 2/4: Nisqually NWR - Thurston County

As soon as the classroom was empty on Friday, I got into my packed car and left for Thurston County.  This for some reason is a county I've done a lot of birding in - more so than Snohomish or Pierce, even though they're a little closer.  Several years back, I saw there were Pine Grosbeaks at Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge, so I went down to check it out, and made a day of it, visiting Mud Bay, Capitol State Forest and a lot of the Olympia waterfront.  Stop one this time was Nisqually again.  They've got a new boardwalk, and there have been some good birds seen there, including a Great Egret.

Nisqually NWR headquarters - actually from the end of my walk
- lights were very welcoming as it got darker, chilly and drizzly.

So I hadn't been here in a while, but knew there had been quite a hubbub and a ribbon cutting on my birthday three days prior.  Just poked around on line about the changes - much of the land here had been protected by dikes to allow for farming, but these dikes were broken and bulldozed away to allow for a true river delta for the Nisqually, which should be good for salmon, and provide good habitat for migrating birds, especially shorebirds.  The hike to the end of the boardwalk was four miles (I just baaarely had time to get back by sunset!) making it one of the longest marine boardwalks on the west coast.



Eurasian Wigeon drake

 Checked the pond above for American Bitterns... I'm going to see one there one of these times.  Entirely possible of course that there's one in the picture pretending to be a bunch of reeds, which they do quite well I've heard.  Lots of dabbling ducks including a Eurasian Wigeon in the ponds before Twin Barns, and the trees at times were completely filled with Yellow-rumped Warblers, Golden-crowned Kinglets and chickadees.  I've heard there's a Great Horned Owl that hangs out along this stretch too, but haven't seen it yet.  I am exceptionally bad at noticing owls during the day.  Once past the barns, I was on the boardwalk.  Reminded me of the walk out to the lighthouse at Dungeness Spit, where you can see the end of the path (in that case, the lighthouse 5 miles away), but it just never seems to get any closer for a looooong time!

The boardwalk from the barns

The barns from the boardwalk

I did see the Great Egret - heard from another person that they had seen it out fishing.  As I turned a bend, I saw it a good bit off.  Before I got too close, a Great Blue Heron chased it off.  Got a nice fuzzy picture of it leaving which I shall not include!  Also at the observing platform at the end - Common and Red-throated Loons, as well as Brant and Dunlin feeding on the islets at the mouth.

Nisqually River Delta from the boardwalk's end

The boardwalk from the very end.

Enough for now, but I will be adding my Saturday morning in Thurston, Saturday afternoon running through Lewis, Cowlitz and Clark, and Sunday in Wahkiakum.  Soon on all I hope!

1/30 Pierce County - Point Defiance

Sunday afternoon, and the kids wanted to hit the zoo.  Point Defiance Zoo is about 40 minutes away for us, and just over the county line into Pierce, so I got a little start on the list for that county.  Went up Ruston Way instead of taking Highway 16.  Declan likes to know that we're going the 'right way' so this threw him off a little bit!  So instead of strip malls, we saw cormorants, gulls and goldeneyes.

In the zoo itself, one of the more interesting birds I encountered was a Northern Pygmy-owl.  This is a species that is found in most parts of the state, but the range map under the owl claimed that its range extended only up to Mexico.  Hmmmm....

Someone asked me if this counted as one of the 39 birds for me for Pierce county - nope.  Alive, wild and unrestrained are the magic words for this.  This bird is pretty restrained at present.  An escaped wedding dove made its way to my back deck one day - same deal.  The Olympic National Forest is where I saw my first Hairy Woodpecker, but it was in the hands of a park ranger who had found it injured - same deal.


Grabbed cocoa at the zoo, and was surprised not to be offered a lid or straw, then remembered that they are composting nearly everything that comes through their food service, and have been for a couple of years.  Very cool.  They also had a map showing where their food comes from (below).  Nice to see it, and nice that it's not locavores gone crazy - just because you can make a pineapple grow here doesn't mean it's saving any energy to make that happen!  Not the first time I've been in an establishment that advertised this either.  Boundary Bay listed their local providers, as did more than one place I stopped in the San Juans.  Washingtonians could eat quite well just off of things grown here - part of what I love about the state.

Finished with a drive around Point Defiance Park - five mile drive around it that gives views of the sound.  Sadly I blew my last picture on some raccoons - then the batteries died.  This park is pretty marvellous, with lots of big trees.  Betcha there's some owls in here.. hmmm... Not a lot of birds down in the water, though, and a lot of them were too tiny for me to ID.  Did have a Rhinoceros Auklet, though, and a few forest birds like Pacific Wren and Spotted Towhee (Winter Wren and Rufous-sided Towhee if your bird books are out of date - my first one is - both of these were split from their eastern cousins fairly recently).



Do 'wild' raccoons accept handouts?  This one does!

Maura needed the facilities on the way home, so we stopped in Fife.  Hit the little ponds off of the freeway as we left.  Not a lot there today, but it has had some really good shorebirds in recent years, so I'm sure I'll visit it down the road!

Some kind of hermit crab that I am unfamiliar with...

San Juan County 1/16

My first ferry ride of the year!  I will admit that I am still a kid with ferries.  I'm on a boat!  WooHoo!  Never mind that it was pitch black as we left Anacortes...

Actually from when I was leaving San Juan Island, but better than an all dark picture...

Got to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island, and grabbed some dinner at the Blue Water Bar and Grill - right near the ferry terminal.  Good chowder, and a very cool bar (a fairly faithful remodel of a 1906 salloon) and I ended up next to a couple who were from Renton and Issaquah originally.  The bartender was from San Juan originally, spent some time in Kent, "..and then I came back..." she said as if she was a little puzzled by the decision.  I don't know that I could do island life - it seems that a ferry commute, despite my stance on ferries, is not as energizing as I might imagine.  Staying on the island could feel isolating, especially when business is so seasonal.  Still... it was very hard to leave the island at the end of the trip... but I'm getting ahead of myself a little.

How often is it cheaper to stay somewhere than it is to get there?  Ferry: $40.  Room: $35.  The Wayfarer's Rest is a hostel in Friday Harbor, which may be quite busy in the summer, but I had the whole place to myself on this night in January (not unheard of in the off-season, I hear).  Full kitchen - wish I'd brought some eggs!  Grabbed a shower, and called it a night.

Got up early again for owls - something I'll feel obligated to do during this year if I feel like I've got a chance to see an owl I haven't for the year.  15 owl species can be seen in Washington in a good year (Snowy, Spotted, Northern Hawk-owl, Western Screech-owl, Burrowing, Barn, Barred, Short-eared, Long-eared, Northern Saw-whet, Northern Pygmy-owl, Flammulated, Boreal, Great Horned and Great Gray.  Great Horned are common on the island, so I drove San Juan Valley Road a bit - listening and calling... nothin.



American Camp - San Juan Island



Got to my dawn destination after that - the American Camp Visitor Center.  Walked out to the wide open fields and as soon as it started to get light - Short-eared Owls!  As it got lighter, they continued to swoop over the fields, stopping now and then to chase what I'm assuming were bunnies.  First time I've been able to see these owls hunting in good light... and I forgot the camera. Ah well.  Just kept watching them until they gave up for the morning.  I did some birding at South Beach at that point - nothing out of the ordinary, but an Eagle perched on a snag while I scoped the water.





Approaching Cattle Point Light

My next big stop after that was Cattle Point.  I have a few happy memories of this place.  I first came here with Bre to see the Cattle Point Lighthouse (and also Lime Kiln - not visited on this trip), and in my first year of teaching, we also came here for our ninth grade trip, which coincided with a lunar eclipse.  We drove the bus out to Cattle Point at night, and were treated to the moon rising in eclipse.  One of the most beautiful sights I've seen.

Cattle Point Light



Prickly rose bushes were pretty common
















Cattle Point was the best stop of the trip for sea birds.  They were out a bit too far for good pictures, but I had Pacific and Common Loons - dozens of each - Harlequin Ducks, Marbled Murrelets, Common Murre, Pigeon Guillemots, Buffleheads, Red-breasted Mergansers, Pelagic Cormorants and Double-crested Cormorants.  In addition, walking the path to the lighthouse led me to House Finches, Golden- and White-crowned Sparrows, as well as a Merlin and a Sharp-shinned Hawk.

Bailer Hill Road and San Juan Valley Road run east-west across the farmland in the middle of the island.  Driving through here, I found a lot of ducks, including Canvasback at Lake Zylstra, and Geese, including Canada and Cackling.  I made a run up Roche Harbor Road after grabbing lunch in town, and found some Trumpeter Swans on one of the lakes.  Also found a perfectly fine telescope for $25 at the thrift store on that road.  Sadly no good mugs...

Went to the ferry terminal to wrap up my trip, and learned that the 2:50 ferry was walk-on passengers only.  I had another hour and a half!  First thing I did was to return to American Camp to look for a bird I knew would be hard to find on my other trips this year - Black Oystercatcher.  I hadn't seen any on the rocks earlier in the day, but decided to walk down to Grandma's Cove from the visitor center.  Success!

Black Oystercatchers!  Saw some more from the ferry flying overhead



Grandma's Cove

 Made one more stop on the way out - Jakle's Lagoon (below), then it was time for a nap while waiting for the ferry.  Good trip to the island, and 50+ species for the day.  I was sad to leave - I don't get up here often enough.  Happily, Bre's idea of travel also includes places like this.  I'll be back.

So happy to get home after four days out, but they were good days, and I had three counties 'done' with 39 birds or more seen in each.  A couple weeks away from a trip to the Southwest corner - Lewis, Cowlitz, Clark and Wahkiakum -  in early February.

Leaving American Camp - the moon peeking out



Jakle's Lagoon



Intermission: Skagit and Snohomish

So these counties were Just-Passing-Through counties for this trip, but had some interesting experiences, and did get a few pictures, so I thought I'd share.  First of all, coming down through Skagit in the winter, I couldn't skip out on Snow Geese - I took Chuckanut Drive down, and came through some farmland.  I was a  little pressed for time with the conference about to start, but was able to pull over for a Eurasian Wigeon (not 'supposed' to be here with American Wigeon, but some of them head south down the wrong continent - a fair share of those give up on heading South once they're in Skagit), and an American Kestrel.  Ooh, also a barn (above)

Poked around some fields, and had 6 Tundra Swans fly overhead.  Thank goodness they were calling - the much easier way to tell them from Trumpeter Swans, which sound like... a trumpet.  Then I found a field full of Snow Geese: 





Snow Geese from Josh Wilson Road - Snohomish

...and in flight.  5 Bazillion of anything is cool, I believe.

At this point, I needed to scurry off to the conference in Everett.  Small thing, but I have to say I haven't quite figured out Everett traffic.  It always seems bunched up... and then today, the exit that I planned to take was only available from northbound 5.  Going south, I had to go right past the place I wanted to go, by a mile or two, and take the next exit.  From there, I wended my way back through town.  Leaving was about as bad - you can't hop right onto I5 from the Everett Holiday Inn from all I can tell... not northbound anyway, so I ended up driving a goooood bit of Everett!

What happened then was a little strange. I wanted to take 140th Avenue (Firetrail Road) over to Marine Drive, then up to Stanwood.  Not the quickest way to get there, but I'd seen posts for Great Horned Owls in the area, and it's a good enough time of year to look for them...  Again, the road I wanted was far enough off of the freeway exit, so I needed to wind around this way and that...in the dark... without directions or Mapquest.  This is the Seven Lakes area (Loma, Martha, Goodwin, Ki, Shoecraft, Crabapple and Howard), so the roads get a little twisty. 

Wasn't planning on driving by the home where I lived from age 5-8, but I did.  Driving along some road, I saw the sign indicating a firehouse, slowed and stopped in front of the firehouse itself, pulling up vague memories of walking up here to buy a bottle of soda now and then.  I backed the car up and saw the driveway - still the same tangles of brush all along it up to the corner where I'd catch the bus.  So strange to be grasping for memories of a place where I lived when I was old enough to remember, but not old enough to really put a good map together in my head... 

Neat at the time, but very haunting when I tried to make my way back to a major road.  Got turned around, and ended up right back where I made the first wrong turn, with no idea how I had made my way to my childhood home.  Still couldn't trace it out on a map, exactly what happened, and I wonder if I should try?



A little lost here....



Good evening of poker with Matt once I got to Stanwood.  Talked to his friends about the year I'm doing, and they were puzzled that there were even 39 different kinds of birds!  That said, they tried listing some, and came up with some I probably wasn't aware of around me until very recently (Kingfishers, for example..).  I told them that 10 years ago, I believed that the Starlings I saw were just baby crows - a fact that always lets people know that I understand.

The next AM, I swung over to Eide Road outside of Stanwood.  I was hoping for Barn Owls, based on my Opperman book "A Birders Guide to Washington" (hereafter, just "Opperman" - apologies to my non-birding friends).  Looked up and down for a barn whrere they might be, and asked some hunters if they ever saw owls in the mornings.  They referred me to "Pierre", who told me where he saw them - "The howls used to leeve in the barn, but zey tore eet down."  Things change! 



Stanwood area - across the Stilliguamish



Snow Geese, Trumpeter Swans, Marsh Wrens, Dunlin, and a Fox Sparrow were the highlights of the morning, then off to a full day at the coaching conference.  Next up, the San Juans (two days behind now, but catching up as quick as I can!)



Northwest Washington - Entry one: Whatcom County

Had a Friday/Saturday coaching conference in Everett, so I made Whatcom and San Juan counties my bookends for the trip, inserting some visits with friends and family as well.  Left school on Thursday after my last class, and actually decided to take Chuckanut, rather than I5, to see if I would end up in a good spot to see some Short-eared Owls in Skagit before meeting up with a friend in Bellingham.  I did see a few - the clearest I'd seen these owls hunting, but it was not my best view of them for the weekend (stay tuned for a San Juan post!)


Boundary Bay Brewing Company - Bellingham






One of the things I'm looking forward to during this trip is spending time with friends and family that are spread around the state a bit.  Thursday evening was a great start to my year, meeting up with a high school friend at Boundary Bay Brewing in Bellingham.  A Western Washington grad at the lunch table at school told me that I had to have the BBQ pork sandwich here, and Mitch agreed.  It is, pardon me, a damn fine sandwich. 

I was hoping to do some owling in the morning - it's the right time of year - and chatted with Mitch about this.  He's not a birder, but gets out around the county a good bit on his bike, so he mentioned several places where he's seen owls during the day, including Whatcom Falls State Park.  In the morning, I checked my map, and realized that the park was really close, so I drove up, and almost immediately after getting out of my car was greeted by a Western Screech-owl calling in the tree right above me.  After two calls, he was done for the day - I walked the park a little more, then decided that wind+drizzle+dark-flashlight= time to go.

Next stop - Blaine!

Boundary Bay, and the Peace Arch

Take a walk with me

And talk with me about Blaine,

The City by the Bay,

Where the sky is blue and people true

And mountains are just a look away.

 

Refrain

Blaine, the Peace Arch City.

Blaine, the City by the Bay.

Blaine, the place to live and play.

Blaine, Washington, is our home.

Okay... the sky wasn't blue, and I couldn't see any mountains, but I had to include that bit of "Blaine, the Peace Arch City", written by fourth grade students from Blaine Elementary back in 1979.  Had several college friends from Blaine - one of whom would pull out that song every now and then. 

Blaine Marina, with mixed scoter flock

The Blaine Marina was very windy!  I was able to find some good waterbirds.  The first of which was a Long-Tailed Duck as it was just getting light.  I got a dark dark picture of it, and didn't go back to it, thinking I'd see a lot of those on this trip - whoops!  White-winged Scoters were the bird that I saw the most during the day - nearly everywhere in large numbers - more than I have ever seen down in King county by quite a stretch.  The dots in the picture by the Peace Arch were geese.  Most were Canada, a fair number were Cackling Geese, and two Snow Geese were really easy to find as well.




Snow Geese?  I thought so, but no black
on the tail!  Some kind of domestic varmints..

 

From Blaine, I went around Drayton Harbor to Semiahmoo Spit.  It was a windy morning, and a spit is not a good place to be when the wind is blowing.  In the choppy waves, there were a lot of scoters - both White-winged and Surf- and Harlequin Ducks, beautiful ducks that love choppy water.  A Northern Pintail was a surprising find, and I also found one each of Red-throated and Common Loon.  The spit was beautiful - I hadn't visited it before, but would love to be there on a sunny day when I didn't feel the need to run for the car.

Cutting across to Birch Bay, I found a Pacific Loon among other birds, including Brant, scoters, and Harlequin Ducks.  Killdeer on the shore were my only shorebirds of the day.  Pacific Loon was one that I had really wanted to see here, as I have seemed to have a hard time finding them in my neck of the woods, although I thought I had one at Birch Bay (see photo below), another look at it, and I realized that this was another Common Loon - the bill is huuuuge compared to a Pacific.  Still a tricky one for me! 



Harlequin Ducks at Birch Bay




Pacific Loon?.... nope - it's a Common Loon that had me tricked

 












Birch Bay

...but at some point, a path is not a path.

From Birch Bay, I went away from the saltwater and over to Lake Terrell.  This is a hunting area - certainly not the last time that I'll pass through one this year!  The people that look at the birds and the people that shoot them don't always agree on things, but preserves like this are designed to make sure there's plenty of birds, which is fine by all of us.  Nice setting, and found some birds that I had not previously, but nothing out of the ordinary here.  Helped one person out by explaining that the black 'ducks' on the lake are called coots.  Didn't tell them that they're not ducks... nobody likes that...




 

Northern Pintail - out of curiosity, I looked it up on a hunting
forum... it says that they taste "like duck".



Lake Terrell












Sandy Point was my next stop - again, a lot of new birds, but nothing unusual.  Then it was on to the Lummi Flats.  This area was quite beautiful, sitting on the Lummi Reservation.  There's a lot of wide open land used by geese and swans (although I saw none on my trip), and that brings with it a lot of raptors (which I did see).  Bald Eagles, Northern Harrier and Cooper's Hawk were out today.  Found about 20 Common Ravens in a field, which seemed odd until I saw the deer carcass they were on. 

Lummi Flats

Northern Harrier - Lummi Flats

This was my last stop in Whatcom before heading south.  Wish I could insert a picture of Mt. Baker, but the clouds wouldn't give me a break.  A beautiful day nonetheless, and 58 different species of birds for the county.  Two down!