Month: October 2014

Can You See What I See?

There are days when I’m reminded that I still have a long ways to go before I become a really good birder. After the slow morning at Ocean Shores we headed to Westport to see what we could find. If it hadn’t been for Leslie, I’m pretty sure I would have missed this mixed flock of Brown Pelicans and gulls.

PlcnHunt

Heck, I have a hard time seeing them even on my computer screen. How many pelicans can you count?

Luckily, I do better at spotting singletons or I would probably give up birding altogether. I managed to spot this Common Murre in non-breeding colors at a considerable distance, while just a speck on the horizon. Considering how seldom I’ve seen these birds, this was a good sighting.

CommonMurreNB

I

f it hadn’t been for two seasoned birders, however, I would never have seen this even rarer Pectoral Sandpiper at Midway Beach. In fact, I stared blankly in the distance nearly five minutes before noticing the bird standing right in front of me, much closer than I ever thought it would be.

PectoralInGrass

Apparently my combat training has trained me to first scan the horizon; I ALWAYS scan from the horizon in. Of course, if this had been an enemy combatant, I would have been dead long before I ever saw it. More often than not, though, I find birds when they move, another skill I practiced in the Army. If they would simply stay put, I’d miss most of them.

Luckily, once you spot birds it’s relatively easy to get pictures. If you’re patient, and quiet, often they’ll simply go back to finding food once they’ve decided you’re not a threat, like this bird did, coming so close I had a hard time keeping it in frame.

PecSndppr

Of course, it helps if you know where to find birds. It’s hard to miss Marbled Godwits

1Godwit

if you show up where they are foraging. They’re one of the larger shorebirds and seem relatively indifferent to people, at least at Tokeland. I haven’t seen them for nearly a year, though,

3MrbldGdts

so this helped to make the day seem complete. After a large lunch, Leslie wasn’t particularly hungry, so we stopped at the Dairy Queen in Raymond where I had my usual chili dog and cola, not quite as satisfying as a Guinness and fish special, but it’s one of my go-to comfort foods that I seldom indulge in any more and a good way to end a nice outing.

A Morning at Ocean Shores

Right after we returned from Nevada, Leslie and I headed out to the beach to catch the end of the Fall Shorebird Migration. It was either that or pick up a poetry book, and I didn’t want to miss a single moment of the wonderful Fall we’ve been having so far. Once the rains begin to descend it might be June before we see two sunny days in a row again, plenty of time to read poetry books.

I’d been reading about recent bird sightings at Ocean Shores, so I thought we’d start the day there. What I didn’t hear was that the State allowed a special, early duck hunting weekend and a man and his two kids were blasting away when we finally arrived at the pond. Needless to say, there weren’t any shore birds in sight (though, as it turned out, I was told later in the day that after the hunters left the shorebirds did show up).

We settled for seeing a small flock of Brown Pelicans, still in summer breeding colors as they flew up the beach line while we were walking back to our car.

OSPlcn1

We even were lucky enough to even see some of them dive for fish, like these two.

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Afterwards we headed up to the jetty, hoping to finally sight the Surfbird that I’ve never managed to see yet. Once again we were foiled by some major waves, making it nearly impossible to walk out on the jetty with risking life and limb.

Instead, we settled for walking the wind-protected side of the jetty, where we spotted Harbor Seals and surfers taking advantage of the high waves. This somewhat less adventurous Sanderling (I’m pretty sure it’s a Sanderling fading from breeding plumage to winter plumage, but I wouldn’t swear by that) joined us on the lee side of the Jetty,

OSSndrlng

where we were soon joined by a pair of Black Turnstones in non-breeding colors.

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I suspect they thought that if the Sanderling could hang out with us it was safe to land nearby.

Generally the morning was a bit of a disappointment, at least birding wise, but it’s hard to be disappointed with any morning that ends with a Guinness Extra Stout and a “Leroy Special,” fish and green salad at the Galway Bay Irish Restaurant.

I Still Haven’t Seen Crater Lake

If we had actually planned to go to Crater Lake, our stop there at the end of our trip would certainly have been the greatest disappointment of our trip. Luckily, it was just an afterthought, and considering my history with Crater Lake it wasn’t surprising that it turned out the way it did. I first tried to go to Crater Lake on my honeymoon with my first wife nearly 50 years ago. As we headed up the road we discovered that an early snow had closed the West Entrance. I have tried to go there several times since then, always with the same result. I long ago accepted the fact that I just wasn’t meant to see the lake.

This trip we were actually approaching the park from the East, and we had most of the day left, plenty of time to visit the park. Things were actually looking pretty good as we entered the eastern portion of the park. I was awed by the deep canyons leading up to the lake.

EastEntry

As we approached the lake, though, we smelled smoke, but we’d encountered smoke most of the way up from Tahoe. Then we encountered a signboard saying not to report a naturally occurring fire. Before long the smoke was so thick we started the air-conditioner, circulating the air in the car.

By the time we reached the top of the crater and were able to see the lake far below, we couldn’t — see it that is. It was completely obscured by the smoke And since the best-known asset of the lake is its clarity, there really wasn’t much to look at.

CraterLakeSmoke

We certainly didn’t bother to drop down into the lake to see what it looked like from there or to take the boat that tours the lake.

We felt sorry for those people who had driven or flown hundreds of miles just to see the park, but I was determined to make the best of our side-trip and focus on what I could see: the jagged edges of the collapsed volcano,

CratersEdge

firs and pines hung precariously on the edge of the volcano,

OntheEdge

and twisted pines, reminiscent of the Bristlecone Pine we saw in California.

Survival

It obviously requires greats strength and endurance to survive on these wind-swept cliffs, especially with such a short growing season, but life has a way of enduring under the most demanding conditions.

TwinTrees

Of course, some of us are merely visitors here, enjoying the beautiful views before flying off for the winter.

TwoJays

We drove a thousand miles to see Bristlecone Pine in Nevada that we never saw and drove hundreds of miles out of our way to see Crater lake and ended up seeing some magnificent trees that we didn’t even know existed. Life reveals itself in mysterious ways if you are open to what’s there.

Expect the Unexpected

As an English teacher I taught students that a good essay should have a theme, an idea that tied all the details together. So it shouldn’t be surprising that I try to do the same thing in most of my blog entries, even if it is nothing more than making a point about a particular flower or a particular bird. In fact, the most common cause for not posting every day, besides pure laziness, is my inability to come up with a theme.

I suspect one of the reasons we value structure and order so highly is that much of life is purely chaotic. Things just happen, but we feel better if we can impose a cause on random events.

My recent trip seemed ample proof of that. Almost everything I planned turned out to be a disappointment, but the trip as a whole was successful because of so many unplanned surprises. The best part of the trip were things that were discovered in route, not things I had anticipated for years.

Visiting Tule National Wildlife Refuge was definitely a last-minute decision, one based on its nearness and on not seeing many birds the rest of the trip. I wasn’t going there to see a particular bird, but just stopped by to see what, if anything, was there.

There were a lot of egrets and grebes, so I focused on them on my first two entries. My favorite pictures were all singletons, though, except for two shots of Red-Tailed Hawks. Leslie got this shot of Red-Tailed Hawk that had obviously become accustomed to people driving by,

Lsle'sRdTalHwk

while I got this shot of another one who seemed to circle to check us out.

TuleRdTal

I certainly wouldn’t drive a thousand miles to photograph a Red-Tailed Hawk since they’re just down the road, but I liked both of these shots.

I hadn’t seen White-Faced at Ibis when I was there before, and there were only a few strays at Tule, but I liked this shot of one landing right in front of us a lot.

TulWhitFacdIbis

Finally, I couldn’t resist getting another shot of Black-Necked Stilt even though they were too far away to get a really good shot.

JuvnilBlkStlt

It was only later in front of the computer that I realized those birds in front of the pair had to be juvenile Black-Necked Stilt, a bird I’d never photographed, or seen, before. When you’re too focused on one thing, you’re very likely to miss something even more interesting.