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Week Fifty-Five, April 1-7, 2002

Sunday, April 7, 2002

The last time Natalie and I ventured to Point No Point and Scenic Beach State Park - the two sites we researched today - it was just a few weeks after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. Flags were flying everywhere and the world was just starting to return from the post-attack haze that clouded everything else in those days after the events. Now more than six months later, the flags are mostly gone. Life is returning to normal on the Kitsap Peninsula, and there were even a few other folks out checking out the park and the natural world on the sandy shore of Point No Point on this gray day.

We didn't find many birds at Scenic Beach State Park. We watched an Anna's Hummingbird feeding on the fresh salmonberry blooms on the embankment above Hood Canal, and a harem of Common Goldeneye were diving and swimming underwater in search of food along the shore. We also spotted some Bufflehead, and away from the shore we found a small flock of Chestnut-backed Chickadees foraging in the mixed forest of fir, hemlock, and cedar trees.

Point No Point was not nearly as busy as it was last October, and the numbers of birds were down as well - at least until dusk started to fall and groups of birds, including Brandt, Bonaparte Gulls, and others started to settle in for the night. The highlight of our bird watching this evening was spotting what appeared to be Rhinoceros Auklet - a pair that kept diving far out from shore, offering us just fleeting glimpses as we tried to make an identification through our spotting scope. We couldn't determine for sure what these birds were until we started walking back to the car and ended up with a much closer view of them feeding near the sandy shore.

I took some pretty good bird photos today, but I really like this shot of the lighthouse at Point No Point, with a couple of other visitors to the area walking away along the sand.

Saturday, April 6, 2002

Natalie and I resumed our research for Birding Washington today, making an afternoon trip out to Manchester State Park near Port Orchard to see what birds we would find on a cloudy spring afternoon. We spent a couple of hours walking around the grounds of the park - taking in the views from near the old torpedo storage building on this park that was once a U.S. Navy supply depot, and then walking the trail that borders the shoreline. And along the way we watched a floatilla of Western Grebe along Rich Passage, what appeared to be a small flock of Mew Gulls flying along the opposite shore almost like shorebirds, and an assortment of other waterfowl. I took a pretty good photo of a Merganser from fairly close range - maybe a shot for the book.

After spending those couple of hours doing research at the park, we decided to drive back through Port Orchard on our way home. I'm glad we did. Along the shoreline heading back into Port Orchard we found some Harlequin Ducks feeding near the shore, and in a group of Wigeon, Natalie picked out two Eurasian Wigeon. We also pulled over to view an immature Bald Eagle sitting in the top of a tree near the shore.

I took the photo above to show the odd cloud formations we found while looking west from Port Orchard, with Bremerton in the foreground and the Olympic Mountains in the distance.

Friday, April 5, 2002

As was predicted, it clouded up and cooled down a bit today, but the rain never really materialized. I was counting on the rain to help water in the seeds I had planted yesterday, but instead I had to venture out to the garden to do some watering of my own.

Thursday, April 4, 2002

This was another day concentrated on gardening. The weather is supposed to turn cloudy with a chance of rain tomorrow through the weekend, and so while the temperatures rose to the mid-60s, I broke out the shorts and t-shirt wardrobe for the first time this year and spent another hour or two in the garden. This time I planted four types of lettuce, swiss chard and beets. And while weeding out the raised garden bed in the front yard I pulled up a few pounds of carrots, shown in the photo above. Some of the carrots are damaged by bugs and freezing over the winter, but most of them weathered the winter nestled in the ground just fine. Now I just need to think of something to do with them...

When Natalie returned from work this evening we took a walk over to Mason Gulch, just to see what birds are active as dusk arrived. We didn't find much going on in the gulch itself, but walking north into the neighborhood we listened to and watched a Red-Breasted Nuthatch, mixing it up with a couple of Black-Capped Chickadees while a Gold-Crowned Sparrow called out in a flowering tree nearby.

The treat of the evening walk came as we walked toward home, and both of us heard a loud call coming from the top of a nearby tree. There at the very top of a fir tree was a Western Scrub Jay calling out loudly, almost frantically. It is no wonder this jay was calling out with such a sense of alarm. Scrub jays are not common this far north. In fact, until now, the farthest north in Tacoma that anyone has seen a scrub jay was the Proctor area - about a mile south of where this bird sat and cried out, waiting for the call to be returned by one of its own kind.

Wednesday, April 3, 2002

I mentioned a Killdeer that was nesting in the bark at one end of the Dean Creek wayside near Reedsport yesterday, and since I didn't take the time to take a fresh photo for today, I include a "Find the Killdeer" photo above.

The weather is glorious so far this week, and between playing catchup with my work and spending a couple of hours working in the garden, I didn't spend the time I should have snapping photos. Instead, I planted potatoes in one of the garden beds and then spent some time late this afternoon weeding in the raised garden bed to plant snow peas. I am a couple of weeks late starting the garden activity this year, but I imagine that things will catch up pretty well - especially since the cool weather and even snow was hanging around as late as three weeks ago.

Tuesday, April 2, 2002

We made the long drive back home to Tacoma today, making a handful of stops along the way. This wasn't a day when we were trying to watch birds as we whisked through the countryside, but during our first stop along the way we found ourselves bird watching just the same. We pulled off the highway that borders the Umpqua River near Reedsport to take a look at the herd of elk in the Dean Creek natural area, and after shooting photos of the elk like the photo above, we turned to watching and listening to Redwing Blackbirds, swooping Barn Swallows, a couple of circling Turkey Vultures and a nesting pair of Killdeer that have set up their nest in a horrible place - right in a bark-filled island at one end of the wayside parking lot.

Before we left Dean Creek we also watched a Pied-Billed Grebe feeding in the creek and a Black Pheobe fluttering along the creek shore as it hunted insects.

One thing I noted on the drive, which took about 12 hours this time due to the number of stops and eating and such, was the point where it seemed the raptors in the air along I-5 changed from Turkey Vultures to a predominance of Red-Tailed Hawks. Somewhere a bit north of Salem the mix of raptors made a switch, and by the time we reached the Woodburn area, where I could see Mt. Hood and Mt. Adams standing guard over the Columbia River to the north, even the presence of hawks along the freeway dropped to nothing.

Monday, April 1, 2002

Natalie and I spent our last day of this trip to Gold Beach battling the winds south of town along Highway 101. I took the shot above while standing on top of the parking area and viewpoint on Cape Sebastian, and the wind was blowing hard enough on this exposed point that I had to brace myself now and then against the gusts. I would guess that the wind was howling around 50-60 miles an hour, but it was still an interesting view and I couldn't resist taking a windswept photo looking south along the coast.

Other than our side trip to the top of the cape, Natalie and I made a couple of short trips into the coast range, first following the path of Hunter Creek where we watched a Red-Shouldered Hawk circling high over the hills, and then following the roads into the hills near Pistol River where we stopped and found a small group of Chestnut-Backed Chickadees flitting from one tree to another. On our way back to Natalie's grandmother's house we stopped along the south jetty than contains the flow at the mouth of the Rogue River and we watched sea lions feeding on salmon as well as a flock of Double-Crested Cormorant and some Scoters all acting in unison as they fed in the waters before nightfall.

But it was later, as we drove home from a restaurant near the harbor that I looked up to see the quintessential scene - an osprey flying overhead and back up the river with a fish in its talons.

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