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Week Sixty-Six, June 17-23, 2002

Sunday, June 23, 2002

After getting home so late last night, we decided to ditch our idea of a whirlwind trip back to Eastern Washington today. Instead, we drove to the Olympic Peninsula for the first time in a while for a book research walk around the portions of Fort Worden that we have not explored on our previous visits to Port Townsend. It was warm and muggy when we set out from the car to walk up the hillside to the vantage points above that once served as U.S. military posts as part of the defense emplacements around the entrance to Puget Sound. And over the two hours that we walked the trails, and managed to get sidetracked, the clouds started to roll in and the temperatures dropped into a more normal Pacific Northwest range.

We actually saw quite a few bird species today, including the flycatcher that I still cannot determine for sure in the photo above. This flycatcher was calling incessantly from the top of a fir tree, sometimes flying a loop up and away from the branch and then settling back just a few inches from the place where it had just been, in typical flycatcher fashion. But looking at the photo it doesn't look like an empidonax flycatcher, and the closest guess I can make is a Olive-sided Flycatcher. The placement of the bird definitely fits with a Olive-sided...

We continued our walk the hillside, catching glimpses of warblers, countless Rufous Hummingbirds, and a pair of Crows grooming each other, before reaching the top of the hill. It's funny that Natalie and I have visited Fort Worden every year over more than 10 years and this is the first time we have walked up this hill. There are a lot of concrete bunkers to explore and a large meadow behind one bunker that looks like good butterfly habitat (We saw and I tried to get a photo of one small blue butterfly up here, but a gust of wind blew the butterfly from its perch before I could get the shot). An interesting art installation graced by poetry by Sam Hamill sits at the top of the hill too, along one of the many criss-crossing roads and trails.

After taking a turn along the walk back down the hill that sent us outside the park, we doubled back and found the car and then drove around some unfamiliar parts of Port Townsend before driving home. It felt odd to just take in one site today, but it was a relief after the run-run-run kind of schedule yesterday.

Saturday, June 22, 2002

We made an interesting loop along the Southwest Washington coast today, with stops at the Willapa National Wildlife Refuge, Ledbetter Point, and Cape Disappointment along the mouth of the Columbia River all mixed into the long day with 377 miles of driving. Under partly cloudy skies, it was a great day to be driving around the state. The only down side - mosquitos were thick at Ledbetter Point this afternoon and we managed to leave home without our insect repellent, so it was a bit of a challenge spending time on the trails along the inner harbor there.

Our highlights of the day definitely came late in the evening when we arrived at Fort Canby and Cape Disappointment around 5 p.m. While walking some of the trails near the top of the hillside we watched a Brown Creeper in the fir trees, and then while standing next to the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center, we looked down to watch the nesting Brandts and Pelagic Cormorants on the rock face below. Since it was a couple of hours before darkness, bird were settling in for the night as well as getting in some last-minute feeding. We were delighted to see a group of Brown Pelicans, such as the ones in the photo above, fly overhead as we stood on the edge of the cliff. And we were surprised a few minutes later when we looked down the ledge to see a female deer and its fawn looking up with ears raised in surprise at us.

I turned to the side to snap this second photo of the Cape Disappointment lighthouse with the Columbia River rolling by in the background. Shortly after this shot we walked back down to the car for the late evening drive past the land of Robert Michael Pyle in Grays River and then into Longview to meet Natalie's parents for dinner. It turned out that we didn't get home until nearly midnight, making for one long but satisfying day.

Thursday, June 20, 2002

During our normal Thursday night turtle monitoring tonight I was drawn to watching a duck family as it paddled around the main pond. I snapped the shot of the pair of growing ducklings through the spotting scope in between sessions of scoping and radio monitoring to track the Western Pond Turtles.

Wednesday, June 19, 2002

Add another butterfly to the list of species we have seen so far this summer in our yard. I was out watering plants in the garden and walking back to the front porch when M saw a butterfly flying near the flowering bush that borders the property line at the north edge of the yard. At first, from her description, I thought it might be the Monarch that we saw last week, but once I got my eyes on it after gathering the camera from inside the house it was clearly a Red Admirable or Red Admiral. We had one of these relatives of the common Painted Lady butterfly in the yard last summer, so this is not something completely new, but it is great to see any butterflies in the yard this year since our supply of nectaring plants is pretty low.

Tuesday, June 18, 2002

I heard exciting butterfly related news this morning, when Jon Pelham, the keeper of the Washington state butterfly records, e-mailed me to let me know that the Queen butterfly I saw and took photos of in August 2000 was being accepted as a valid butterfly record despite the fact that it was well out of the normal range for the species. The exciting thing is that according to Robert Michael Pyle's latest book, Butterflies of Cascadia, there is only one other record of a Queen butterfly in Cascadia - a single butterfly seen at an elevation of nearly 6,800 feet near Steens Mountain in southeastern Oregon in the fall of 1999. This means that my sighting is now the first official record of this butterfly in Washington, and just the second record for the region!

In his book, Pyle writes that butterfly watchers should keep an eye out for more Queen butterflies mixed in with the fall migration of Monarch butterflies heading south for the winter. The ironic thing is that it was reading Pyle's book Chasing Monarchs that awakened my still growing interest in butterflies back in 2000, and I was still reading that book in August of 2000 when I spotted the Queen in our yard and took six photos of the butterfly. Those photos are the key to this being accepted as a valid butterfly record, combined with the fact that it is unlikely that a Queen would be released at a wedding or escape from a butterfly farm somewhere.

Cool!

Monday, June 17, 2002

Back home again after a trip that covered more than 800 miles, in which we saw 148 species of birds, and another host of butterflies. The weather was overcast and the looks at butterflies were not as good today, but we had some great birding - a Least Flycatcher near Cameron Lake, a Williamson's Sapsucker in the Loup Loup campground, and just before we made the dash over the North Cascades Highway a Barred Owl in daytime in the Loup Loup campground.

The most unique moment of the day came this morning as we finished our drive around the Cameron Lake area and had our path down the gravel road blocked by a cattle drive, complete with cowboys, a cowgirl, and herd dogs. I snapped the shot of one of the cows passing our car in the bustle of cow flesh, flies, and noise.

It was amazing to end our day on this note, with a great daytime view of the Barred Owl in the shot above. This was a great trip, but I have to say...I am glad to be home.

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