Red-Necked Phalaropes

After I sent my picture of a Wilson’s Phalarope to Ruth to positively identify it, she showed me the pictures she’d gotten of a Red-Necked Phalarope at Ocean Shores. Needless to say, the next clear day I headed to Ocean Shores to add that bird to my collection.

I started by making a quick stop at the sewage pond to see what was there. I noticed a small little bird floating in the front pond that I didn’t recognize. As I watched it through the camera lens, I finally realized it was the bird that I had come to find:

Red-necked Phalarope

The Red-Necked Phalarope is only about half the size of the Wilson’s Phalarope, and this phalarope spent the entire time I was there floating on the pond picking food up instead of wading like the Wilson’s I’d noticed the week before.

Later I headed over to one of the ponds and marshes down the beach. If I’d known how many phalaropes there were going to be there, I certainly wouldn’t have spent so much time trying to get a good picture of the the Red-Necked Phalarope at the sewage pond.

However, knowing I had already gotten some good pictures of the phalarope just floating gave me the opportunity to try to get shots in a less common pose, like this one just taking-off,

Phalarope Taking Off

and the patience to wait for this particularly striking one to stop preening long enough that I could get a shot that also included its head.

Red-necked Phalarope

I’d been photographing the phalaropes for quite awhile when this a whole flock of birds suddenly swooped in—just as my compact card filled up— so I only managed to get one shot. At first I thought they were Bonaparte Gulls, but when I was studying my Audubon Guide, I realized they were actually male Red-necked Phalaropes.

Or, maybe not, my friend John emailed me stating that he thinks, judging from Sibley’s, that they look more like Bonaparte Gulls than male phalaropes. Since I’ve never seen a Red-necked Phalarope before Thursday, much less a male phalarope, there’s every possibility that my first guess was right and the second one was wrong. If they are Bonaparte Gulls, I wonder why there are no adults in full breeding plumage, like the flock I saw recently in Malheur. Still, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

“Wish You Were Here, Buddy!”

I was recently contacted by craig werner who’s writing a book on music and the Vietnam War. He’d read my reaction to Creedance’s “Fortunate Son” and wanted my perspective on what part music played in my experience, both during and after the war.

Needless to say, that got me thinking about my experiences, and one song stood out, this one by Pat Boone:

Well, hi there, buddy
Thought I`d drop you a line
I haven`t seen you
For a hundred years

When you get time
Will you let me know
If it`s true what a fella hears

Heard you been leading
Those campus demonstrations
You`re as busy as you can be
If the sit downs, walk outs
And others aggravate you
Bet you hardly ever think of me

Well, I`m on a little
Vacation in South Vietnam
And expense paid trip for one
I got my own little rifle
And a great uniform
And a job that must be done

For it’s sleeping in the jungle
And ducking real bullets
And man, it`s a lot of fun
Wish you were here
(Wish you were here)
Wish you were here
(Wish you were here)

I heard you let your hair grow
Til it`s hanging on your shoulders
And you hardly have time to shave
Bet the girls all flip
‘Cause you look so fine like
Something crawled out of a cave

Heard Uncle Sam
Done scared you to death
But you fooled him just in time
Just stuck a little match
To your old draft card
Then you burned up
A future like mine

Well, I`m on a little
Vacation in South Vietnam
And expense paid trip for one
I got my own little rifle
And a great uniform
And a job that must be done

For it’s sleeping in the jungle
And ducking real bullets
And man, it`s a lot of fun
Wish you were here
(Wish you were here)
Wish you were here
(Wish you were here)

Oh, I know you`re not scared
You’re a real brave guy
You’re a regular Cassius Clay
And I know you`da fought
When the country was young
But the world`s just different today

Well, you just stay home
And leave the fighting to us
And when the whole
Durn mess is through
I`ll put away my rifle
And the old uniform
And I`ll come looking for you

For it’s sleeping in the jungle
And ducking real bullets
And man, it`s a lot of fun
Wish you were here
(Wish you were here)
Wish you were here
(Wish you were here)

Wish you were here, old pal
(Wish you were here)
Wish you were here
(Wish you were here)
Wish you were here, little buddy
(Wish you were here)

I wanna introduce
You to them Comms
(Wish you were here)
Come on over and we`ll just
Hold em ’til you get here, okay
Wish you were here.

This was definitely one of the most played songs on the local GI station, along with Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walking” and Barry Sadler’s “Song of the Green Beret.” Perhaps not surprisingly, I had one hell of a time finding the album to buy when I returned to the states. Apparently not everyone found it as humorous as I did. Amazingly, I still find it very funny, though perhaps for different reasons than I originally did.

I’m sure this is the only Pat Boone album, or song for that matter, I’ve ever purchased. I was always an Elvis fan; my older brother was an Pat Boone fan and I used to tease him over that. Pat Boone was/is a hopeless square, nothing else to say.

But this song reminds me of one of those old Bing Crosby/Bob Hope Road Movies that I used to love as a kid. I’m sure that most of us in Vietnam shared at least some of these feelings, though I don’t remember ever thinking “I’ll come looking for you.”

Considering my crewcut, the lines “Bet the girls all flip/ ‘Cause you look so fine like/ Something crawled out of a cave” must’ve certainly struck me as funny at the time, though they might not have seemed so funny a few years later when I had a beard and a pony tail and the border agents kept giving me strange looks when I traveled to Alaska.

Probably one of the few constants in my life has been the ability to stand back and laugh at myself, and others. My hiking partner Bill once stated that one of the things that stood out when we got ourselves into a “bad place” was that I would always laugh, probably thinking “Dumb Ass, how’d you get yourself in this mess.” the whole time.

Perhaps I learned that from my Dad at a very early age when we were out fishing and a storm would come up and waves would be breaking over the edge of the rowboat and he’d yell out, “Aren’t we having a great time?!” Looking back, and Thank God we COULD look back, he always seemed right.

And on to Bottle Beach

Although I was elated to see the Wilson’s Phalarope in the morning, I rushed to get out of there because I wasn’t going to miss the chance to bird Bottle Beach under perfect conditions. As usual, I was way too early, there long before anyone else showed up, which was fine with me because I enjoy the beauty and quiet.

I was also very happy when birds began to show up. First came the Black-bellied Plovers, way out before the tide had come half way in.

Black-Bellied Plover

I started snapping shots early one when they were a quarter mile away, afraid that like last year they would never come very close. I was hoping my 500mm lens with a doubler would give me some decent shots. I ended up deleting all those early shots because they ended up coming quite close, particularly before other photographers joined me.

I also got even better shots of the Ruddy Turnstones

Ruddy Turnstone

that I’d seen for the first time ever the week before.

And the beach was full of Red Knots,

Red Knot

one of the prettiest shorebirds.

But, as before, the real highlight of the shoot wasn’t a particular bird, no matter how pretty it might be; no the real highlight is being surrounded by thousands of birds, mostly hard-to-identify “peeps,”

Peeps

who pay absolutely no attention to you unless you do something foolish to frighten them.

Although you begin the shoot pointing your lens toward the bay, by the end of the shoot it doesn’t matter which way you point it — there are birds everywhere. It’s a feeling I seldom experience, but am always enraptured when I do.

Wilson’s Phalarope

When I was at Nisqually I mentioned that I wanted to see a Snipe, one of the few birds in my book on Puget Sound birds that I still haven’t seen after five years of birding. A volunteer suggested that she’d often seen them at John’s River, south of Aberdeen. Since I was planning on going to the coast this week anyway, I decided to go down early the next day to look for snipes.

Needless to say, I didn’t see a single one at John’s River on Thursday.

But that was okay, because I ended up seeing the best birds of the day there. For instance, I haven’t seen a Common Yellowthroat

Common Yellowthroat

since they closed the five-mile loop at Nisqually. Nor have I been this close to a Yellowlegs since they closed the loop.

Yellowlegs

Most of all, I’ve never seen a Wilson’s Phalarope

Wilson's Phalarope

since they’re extremely rare here in the Pacific Northwest. And, although it was quite shy, it seemed perfectly willing to wade around the far side of the pond as I snapped pictures for the next thirty plus minutes.

Wilson's Phalarope

It was one of those “aha” moments that makes the long walks and the waiting worthwhile. The sheer beauty of the bird and its totally unexpected appearance made this the kind of magical moment I’ll remember, the big one that didn’t get away.