The last half of our Dunes walk was as delightful as the first half. I usually have to go to the coast to get shots of loons, but we spotted a pair far off shore.
We didn’t see the pair on our way back, but we knew this was unmistakably a loon when it posed with its rear leg raised.
The female Red-Breasted Merganser came in closer, too.
I was unable to identify this bird, but it didn’t look out of place on the edge of the Salish Sea.
We extended our walk a little by detouring through the Japanese Garden
where we were treated to this beautiful display of Fall color.
We managed to sneak in a walk on The Dunes Trail between showers. It wasn’t exactly sunny, but it wasn’t so dark that you couldn’t manage to get a decent shot. Close shots, like this one of a Yellow-Rumped Warbler in non-breeding colors turned out quite well.
Like most birds this size, this little guy wouldn’t sit still long enough for me to see it clearly. The photo, though, confirmed my first impression.
The 600mm lens allowed me to capture this shot of a Harbor Seal, that was apparently just chilling in the marina. I actually had a hard time spotting it and had to point it out to Leslie and Paul.
The seabirds that overwinter in the Puget Sound seem to be returning. This female Goldeneye was relatively close, compared to the other seabirds we saw.
There were quite a few other birds offshore, but it was nearly impossible to identify them with the naked eye. This heavily cropped photo revealed that this was a Double-Crested Cormorant.
Even at a distance the neck suggested cormorant, but I didn’t have a clue what kind of cormorant until I put the picture on the screen. This shot is heavily cropped and appeared somewhat fuzzy when blown up so that the cormorant filled the screen. Still not sure if that is because the camera didn’t focus directly on the cormorant because it was so far away or because I was using a fast shutter speed and the image is rather “noisy.”
I’ve been neglecting my blog lately because birding is slow, the weather, until recently, has been less than cooperative, and we still haven’t committed to hitting the road during this pandemic. It’s certainly not helpful that I’m finding it difficult to finish books that I’ve started and even harder to actually write something about the ones that I have finished.
Luckily, recent weather forecasts of freezing temperatures have been wrong and we have been having an Indian Summer, which has gotten us out of the house and walking more regularly. Unfortunately, when we are focusing on exercise, and not birding, I usually leave my camera home unless we’re hiking on Mt. Rainier.
So, on our recent walk to The Dunes area in Pt. Defiance Park and the return through the Rose Garden I was forced to resort to using my iPhone 11 camera. Though it failed miserably to capture shots of the Sea Lions sunning on the rocks along the shore, it did manage to capture some nice shots of the flowers.
The roses took a beating from the week-long rains, but there are still new ones emerging as long as the predicted freezing doesn’t occur.
The dahlias really seem to take center-stage in the Fall, though, and they seem unfazed by a little rain and cooler temperatures. The hardest part of photographing them is remembering what pictures I’ve posted of them previously. I don’t remember posting this one, but recently I have trouble remembering what day of the week it is, so forgive me if the same shot appears in “Related.”
I seriously doubt that I could have seen this one previously and not posted it,
but some things are so beautiful they shouldn’t be ignored.
It’s hard to believe, but it’s been nearly a month since we visited the Rose Garden to see the dahlias in full bloom. Time seems to go much slower when the smoke is so thick that you can’t leave the house for nearly a week and half. I’ll have to admit that just looking at these shots cheered me up a little bit.
I’ve posted so many dahlia pictures in this blog over the years that I have to remind myself that I love them just as much every summer as I did the summer before. After all, absence makes the heart grow fonder.
It’s hard to imagine that this beauty wouldn’t always seem striking:
Certainly the bees never seem to lose their fondness for them.
Judging from the number of photos I’ve posted over the years, this would have to be my favorite.
