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Week Sixty-Eight, July 1-7, 2002

Sunday, July 7, 2002

Under ominous skies we spent the day on the waters near Protection Island in the Strait of Juan de Fuca on a six-hour trip with the folks who run The Menzies Project. Despite the rain that dominated the trip back to Port Townsend this afternoon, it was a great trip. Natalie and I saw three birds we had not seen so far this year - Common Murre, Tufted Puffin, and Heerman's Gull - in addition to more than 100 seals hauled up on the beaches on the island and at least two Harbor Porpoise near the entrance to Sequim Bay.

As our trip set out it was sprinkling, and after clearing the turbulent waters at Point Wilson, where the Pacific Ocean meets the main interface with Puget Sound on this day with one of the lowest tides of the year, the turbulent skies overhead kept pulling my attention away from the water and bird watching. While I kept seeing hundreds of Pigeon Guillemot and a few Marbled Murrelet as the boat made its way to Protection Island, boiling mammatus clouds - the type most often associated with thunderstorms and tornadoes - kept gathering overhead. I snapped the photo above once we reached the western end of the island, and it shows the small island that makes up the Protection Island National Wildlife Refuge with the dramatic clouds overhead.

It was great seeing Tufted Puffin again, as well as watching the many mature and immature Bald Eagles as they hunted and fed on the island. One eagle appeared to be feeding on a dead seal pup, and others seemed to delight in flying over the many Glaucous-winged Gulls and making them cry out and scatter for fear that they could meet the same fate as the seal pup.

It was also great to get a different view of the Point Wilson Lighthouse, shown in the shot above as we passed by and into the rough waters in the tidal rip to the northeast of Fort Worden. We were going through the passage when the tide was changing, which can make for some rough waters. It wasn't bad this time, but ships have gone down off this point throughout history.

After spending an hour or so taking water samples and looking at plankton under a microscope that was projected on a large plasma screen in the RV Mary Beth, we started the non-stop motor back to Port Townsend under a steady stream of rain. And when we got home, we just missed the first of two thunderstorms to pass through Tacoma. Rhia managed to get out of the fenced back yard and run all around the neighborhood while the storm rumbled through, and we had to retrieve her from our neighbor's house. And again tonight as I went to bed around 11 p.m. we had lightning striking in the neighborhood, including one strike that looked like it hit within a couple of blocks of here. The rumble from that strike shook the house.

We should have known the storm was coming. We saw all the signs of the erratic weather hours before, as we bobbed on the open water under turbulent skies.

Thursday, July 4, 2002

While running to the store this morning to pick up some goodies for this afternoon's gathering with friends, I pulled to the side of the road and snapped a patriotic shot of flags alongside the road here in North Tacoma. The sun was shining this morning, but by the afternoon it was sprinkling...

Tuesday, July 2, 2002

This time I saved the possum. Tonight as I was heading to bed I heard our dog Abe barking excitedly again in the back yard, and when I stepped outside he was standing over a large rat-like creature in the grass that he didn't want to give up to me. It was another young possum, and at first it looked like he had killed it. We put Abe in the house and went back outside to check on the creature and I scooped it up in a shovel planning to remove it from the yard, but this time it moved slightly. I set the possum down near the compost piles in the back of the yard, outside the dog fence, and went inside to tell Natalie it appeared that the creature was just playing possum.

A minute or two later when we went back out to look at the possum in the light of a flashlight, it was breathing and moving around with no visible signs of fatal injury. It looks like the little guy will live to see another day!

Monday, July 1, 2002

I spent some time today quantifying our bird research from this weekend, and also listing the species we have seen so far this year just to see what kinds of numbers we have.

• Some of the numbers are disturbing, like the fact that we drove 2,566 miles doing book research in June. In normal years we drive about 3,000 to 5,000 miles in an entire year...
• Miles on our last trip = 495
• Species seen on our last trip = 64
• Species seen year-to-date = 233

That last number surprised me. We are not trying to build up a huge list of bird species sightings for the year, but rather trying to investigate each of the 100 to 110 sites that we will profile in Birding Washington, but along the way we are seeing a lot of birds. Realistically, we could see another 50 or more species before the year is done, although our in-the-field research is sure to slow to a crawl once we move into heavy writing mode in August, September, and October. Right now, our total of 233 birds for the year in the state, when compared to the lists of people who counted in-state species for last year would come out in the top 25 birders in the state. Of course, those are only the folks who report their sightings, but still, there is no doubt we have seen a lot of bird species so far this year.

Listing is definitely not our goal, other than listing the birding sites for Birding Washington, but it is interesting to see where the numbers are at going into the latter part of the summer.

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