Wednesday’s trip to the coast started off rather inauspiciously, just as my trip two weeks earlier had done. The skies were clear when I left Tacoma, but by the time I reached Elma I had a hard time seeing the road because the fog was so thick. Occasional patches of sunshine, however, gave me hope that it might actually be clear when I reached Bottle Beach.
It wasn’t to be, at least not at first. The fog was so thick when I first got there that I had a hard time seeing the water at all. Just how thick it was became clear when I heard a flock of Canada Geese at 8:45 and turned to take a quick shot:
Surprisingly, the picture wasn’t blurry, probably because it was a uniform gray and I was panning desperately as they passed just above my head. The picture is actually a tad grayer than it seemed to my eyes, but I was really surprised that I got a picture at all.
Luckily, the fog was burning off rapidly by then, and this shot of a flock of Godwits landing taken at 8:50 was clearer,
though it still lacked color.
I ended up trashing nearly all the pictures I took the first hour because the exposure caused graininess, but by 9:32 when I took this shot of another small flight of Canada Geese
the lighting was nearly ideal. coming directly over my shoulder onto the birds lining the shore.
All I had to worry about by then was blowing out the highlights in the white feathers:
I’ve certainly seen more birds and rarer birds, but it was a great day, perhaps because birding has been so slow around here lately.