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Week Sixty-Nine, July 8-14, 2002

Sunday, July 14, 2002

Let the writing begin! Since Natalie and I both woke up with headaches this morning, we decided to take a break from book research and do some real writing. And so far today I finished one chapter about yesterday's visit to Birch Bay State Park and the area around there and started the chapter about last weekend's boat cruise to Protection Island.

While we didn't head out into the wild today, I thought I would post another photo that we really liked from our trip yesterday. The shot above is a Pacific Tree Frog that we found near the entrance to the Terrell Creek Marsh Trail at Birch Bay State Park. Natalie was able to pick up the frog and we both pet it a little before setting it free back into the blackberry bushes and brambles where its coloring made it impossible to find again later.

Saturday, July 13, 2002

What a long day of driving, and what great scenery along the way! From the views of Mount Baker to the bird life at Birch Bay State Park north of Bellingham, it was a great day. But 405 miles of driving in one day, even mixed in with the stops for research, bird watching and photography, is a lot of driving.

Our mission today was to go to the northern-most sites in Western Washington that we will include in Birding Washington, and we accomplished that with visits to Birch Bay, Lake Terrell, Lummi Flats and then a long drive across scenic Deception Pass and onto Whidbey Island to investigate the birds around Crockett Lake and Fort Casey. I haven't quantified how many bird species we saw today, but we did add one new species to our Washington state list for the year (a Northwestern Crow seen at Birch Bay).

The most prominent bird today at Birch Bay State Park was what appeared to be two or three families of Kingfisher along the banks of Terrell Creek. Altogether there were nine Kingfisher, including the young one in the photo above, that kept hunting and chattering as they flew from one perch to another along the slow-moving stream. In my mind the highlight of this park is the habitat along the creek. We enjoyed a great walk along the half-mile Terrell Creek Marsh Trail, where we saw and heard many Swainson's Thrush, as well as a House Wren singing alongside the trail, and a group of Gold-crowned Kinglets flitting around in the treetops. Though short, this interpretive trail is a pretty good introduction to wetland and damp forest birding.

Our trips to Lake Terrell and Lummi Flats were a bit of a disappointment. Both are interesting habitats and I am sure they are great locations during the migration season, but neither of them seemed to match up to being among the top 100 birding sites in the state. We removed them from our chapter lists, although both will be mentioned in the Birch Bay chapter.

It was a bit of a stretch to end the day with our dash to Crockett Lake. I was hoping that when we arrived we might find a handful of early migrating fall shorebirds, but the evening birds along this unique lake were few - just a handful of Great Blue Heron, a couple of hunting Northern Harrier, and a Savannah Sparrow in the grasses along Keystone Spit. We may visit this area again in the fall.

Thursday, July 11, 2002

Tonight was our last weekly visit to the South Puget Sound Wildlife Area for monitoring the Western Pond Turtles, and I sort of wish it wasn't over. It will be nice to have our Thursday evenings back, but it has been great to get out in nature and to watch the birds, the muskrat, and the other wildlife at these small ponds.

As we were leaving the area tonight I stopped to take a look at and try to get a photo of one of the Red-tailed Hawks that stays around the old homestead.

Monday, July 8, 2002

I keep expecting to see butterflies landing on this purple flower from our front yard, but so far it has been full of bees but no butterflies.

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