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Week Sixty, May 6-12, 2002

Sunday, May 12, 2002

On our way home from Longview today we took a detour over to look at the wildflowers and to see what birds we could find around at 7 p.m. in the Mima Mounds area. This is the first time I have been at the Mima Mounds since I was a teen and my summer job was to clean up the campgrounds and facilities serviced by the Washington State Department of Natural Resources in the nearby Capitol State Forest, and the Mima Mounds are a great place to close out a sunny Sunday! Our complaint for tonight was the pair of model airplanes that were noisily flying just off to the west of the natural area and surely ending any hopes of our seeing a White-tailed Kite and many other birds.

We ended up spending an hour or so at the Mima Mounds - walking the paved trail that winds between the mounds to take a look at the wildflowers that are starting their show that will peak in a few weeks, then sitting on top of the viewing ramp to watch for birds while the noisy planes flew off in the distance. I snapped the photo above looking to the north from the viewing ramp, and I love the look of the shadows from each mound as the sun started to fade behind the Black Hills.

Saturday, May 11, 2002

Natalie and I are back on the bird book research trail today, this time driving south to visit her parents for the weekend in Longview. And today, after stopping in Longview, we went with Natalie's mom to the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge, a bit farther south down I-5 toward Portland, Ore. I think that all of us came away from the refuge a little surprised at what could be found there. First we visited the Marty Unit, which is a large chunk of land and wetlands with a network of trails winding between them and through the various habitat zones. The lush green of some of the wetlands here were amazing in the sunshine (see the photo above), and as a bonus we spotted five turtles basking in the sun alongside one of the ponds, which thrilled Natalie since she is a turtle fan. No, these are not native turtles, so far as I know...

I really liked this section of the refuge, which I didn't really know about before our visit today. It is harder to access than the better-known S-Unit, which is pretty much a 4.2 mile drive along a gravel road on top of a dike separating the various wetland habitats. Along the way we saw another Olive-sided Flycatcher like the one we saw earlier in the week at China Lake Park, as well as numerous Violet-Green and Rough-winged Swallows - some of which are nesting in the trees that rise from the deep green grasses of the wetlands. One of the other reasons I think I liked this area is that it features a small stand of oak trees, sort of like the oak trees I grew up alongside as a kid growing up south of Olympia, Wash.

The best bird sightings we had today took place this evening as we spent a couple of hours making the loop through the S-Unit on the southern edge os the refuge. We stopped at one point to take a look at a Yellow-headed Blackbird mixed in with the Red-winged Blackbirds in the cattails, and as a bonus we noticed a long-beaked shorebird of some sort sitting on top of a fence post about 50 yards away. We later figured that this was a Common Snipe, and though I took a couple of photos of the bird through our spotting scope, they didn't turn out to be useful. I did get a good shot of a Red-winged Blackbird through the scope though.

Farther along the road, after seeing a trio of rabbits feeding near along the dike, we parked and walked a short trail out to the photo blind to see what we could find. Our ears and some serious patience helped me pick out the head of an American Bittern just barely peaking up above the reeds as it made its repeated calls from just 25 feet or so away. The unreal guttural sound brought to mind some kind of odd frog croaking in the water that was all around the blind, but I was sure it was a bird, so I kept looking and found it just before we left the area. I should have been paying more attention when I spotted another bird at the photo blind though. Just outside the blind I watched what I first thought was a Coot or something sitting in the reeds, but later tonight while looking through the National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America I figured out that what I was seeing was actually a Sora - a tough to view marsh bird with a dark body and bright yellowish-orange, thick beak. As soon as I refreshed my memory by seeing the drawing of the Sora I knew I had misidentified the bird...and I could have taken a nice photo of the Sora too...

Friday, May 10, 2002

A bright yellow bird with a small black cap on its head visited our snowball bush in the yard today, and it didn't take me any time at all to grab the guidebook and identify the skittish and always-moving bird as a Wilson's Warbler. The funny thing is that after I IDed this bird I realized that I had been watching the same species yesterday while walking around the TCC nature trails. I tried to get a photo of this bird, which came back to the bush a handful of times throughout the day (including a visit just in time for Natalie to see it), but it moves around so much that there was no way to get a good shot with the digital camera on this day.

Thursday, May 9, 2002

I took a detour on my bike ride home from M's house this afternoon to walk through the nature trails area at Tacoma Community College, and I was pleasantly surprised to find some great habitat stretching from S. 19th St. to S. 12th St. that is laced with marshy areas, scrub trees, Oregon Grape and other plants that are great for birds. I didn't find anything too spectacular in the way of bird species - I heard a Ring-necked Pheasant but never saw it, I watched some kind of warbler feeding in a tree beside the wetlands, listened to Red-winged Blackbirds and Mallards in those same wetlands, and I watched and took a photo of the Brown-headed Cowbird that can barely be seen in the photo above.

Wednesday, May 8, 2002

As I grow to become better at bird watching, I am both learning more to rely on bird songs to help speed up identifying what is around me. But this morning as I was walking the dog I came across on bird bent on screwing up anyone trying to do birding by ear.

In an alley at the end of our street I heard and saw a Starling sitting on top of a roof and carrying on like Starling can do - chattering, metalic sounds. But, just as I looked away, I heard another call from the same area that sounded just like the high, piercing call of a Killdeer. As I started looking around for where the Killdeer may be, then a loud frog sound came from the same direction. I looked up, and sure enough the Starling was making both the Killdeer and the frog sounds - single handedly increasing the number and variety of animal species in our neighborhood.

Starling are well known as mimics, and in the past we have had a Starling in the neighborhood and makes meowing sounds like a cat and earlier this year a Starling was sitting on top of a neighbor's roof and making Red-winged Blackbird calls. But this was the first time I had witnessed one bird immitating other animals within a few seconds of each other. It is enough to make me wonder if the Red-breasted Nuthatch calls I have intermittently heard around the neighborhood were genuine...

Monday, May 6, 2002

What an odd weather day. This morning it was cold and breezy again, but the sun was out. The sun was also out this afternoon when I scanned around the front yard for a photo subject and snapped the shot above of a poppy bud that will soon burst into bloom. But this evening, as Natalie and I sat in a nearby dive restaurant eating dinner, a storm cloud rolled through and dropped about an eighth of an inch of hail and sent the temperatures diving lower than I can ever remember seeing them this late in May. By the time midnight rolled around, it was 32 degrees outside and I was wondering how the garden is going to fair in the unseasonable cold. I have been keeping a weather journal with temperature records dating back to 1996 and this is the latest we have seen a freeze here in those six years...

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