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Week Fifty-Nine, April 29-May 5, 2002

Sunday, May 5, 2002

Today Natalie and I stayed home, rested, and took it easy as a cool breeze blew outside the entire day. But I couldn't let us go all day without a trip outside to see what birds we could find. We ventured over to the rim of Mason Gulch about an hour before sunset, and although we didn't find any surprises as the cold winds chilled us thoroughly, it was good to get outside and to snap a photo of the deep greens and blues that made up the scenery.

The normal birds we found in the gulch included a Rufous Hummingbird doing its best to scare off a Stellar's Jay in one corner of the gulch, while a host of other noisy jays worked along the edges of the road, mixed in with American Robins. There were no swallows to see tonight, and the Red-tailed Hawks that we saw here last summer don't seem to be around right now. I think I will make an effort to track the arrivals and departures of birds from this large gulch this year. It seems like a fitting way to watch the seasons pass.

Saturday, May 4, 2002

Back on the book research trail today. Natalie and I decided to forego a birding field trip with our intermediate bird watching class from the Tahoma Audubon Society, since they were doing a two-day trip back down to Grays Harbor, Ocean Shores and Westport - the same area we visited each of the last two weekends - and so today we ventured north to the Skagit Flats area and Samish Island. I am sure we didn't see as many species or as many other birders as our class did, but we still found some interesting birds and had an exciting end to our afternoon trip.

The photo above of a Bald Eagle sitting on a rock just above the tideline was taken along March Point, which separates Fidalgo Bay and Padilla Bay near Anacortes. We found the eagle along with a few hundred shorebirds - Western Sandpiper, Dunlin and a couple of Least Sandpiper - and a dozen or so Red-breasted Merganser along the near shore. The tide was out, which makes a big difference in this large estuary, but there were still a lot of birds to be seen.

We also noted some of the largest concentrations of Great Blue Heron that we have ever seen - first in Fidalgo Bay where the tide created huge mudflats where the lanky birds could feed, and then later in Padilla Bay a few miles away. But the best sight of the day happened late in the evening, around 6 p.m., when we stopped at Bay View State Park to watch the herons that were gathering in the shallow waters offshore.

The photo above doesn't do justice to the scene. More than 150 Great Blue Herons including at least a couple of younger birds were feeding, squabbling and generally mucking about near the shore. Amazing! Herons are more known for their solitary nature, and even though there are heron rookeries along the shores of Padilla Bay and Fidalgo Bay, I haven't seen this kind of gathering before. These huge birds that look more like Pteradactyls than modern-day birds are amazing to see close up one-on-one, but with just Natalie and I watching and photographing 150 of them...it was a great way to end the day!

Thursday, May 2, 2002

Natalie and I went down to the waterfront along Ruston Way this evening to see what kinds of birds we could find during this spring migration in our own neighborhood. Closest to home, we found a Pigeon Guillemot feeding about 150 yards off the shore, and we watched a pair of gulls pursuing a third gull that held a clam in its beak - only to drop it during a tricky flying maneuver with one of the pursuing gulls nearly catching the falling clam in mid-air before it rattled down between the large bolders that line the shore. A short distance down the shore we also had a good look at a Horned Grebe in its full spring breeding plumage. What a spectacular golden brown on those horns!

Farther down the shore, along the piers where the newest waterfront park opened last year, we watched a small raft of eight Western Grebe bobbing in the white-capped waters of Commencement Bay while a pair of Barrows Goldeneye - birds that I would have figured would be long gone by now - floated in the much calmer waters near the shore.

I was hoping to see some vagrant shorebirds, but not this time...

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