Month: September 2016

A Few More from Theler

Although I drive hundreds of miles to visit places that have huge numbers of birds (and get some of my best shots), I sometimes think you learn more about birds when there aren’t very many of them around. You should because you definitely spend more time looking at each bird than you would otherwise.

Hopefully, you also get better pictures of them.

kldrft

I’d never really notice how delicate the feet on a Killdeer are.

I actually started to believe I could see the difference between these Western Sandpipers

wstrnsndpipers

and the Least Sandpipers I showed yesterday.

If I hadn’t been hunting so hard, I might even have missed this Yelllowlegs preening itself.

ylwlgspren

Not too much later it could be seen prowling the mud flats with a rather large worm in its beak.

ywlgswrm

We saw so few birds that I even ended up taking more pictures of the Least Sandpipers at the end of the walk. This one seemed to feel that he was hidden by the rock and stood still long enough to have his portrait taken.

lsthidng

Fall Approaches

Those huge, lumbering yellow buses aren’t the only signs Summer is over and Fall is fast approaching. Even before the buses appeared, the resident squirrels and the invading Stellar Jays

YoungJay

were quarreling over who owns all those hazelnuts buried in our backyard.

Our Sunday visit to Belfair started out eerily quiet as we didn’t hear a single bird on our walk through the woods down to the wetlands, and we weren’t serenaded by a single Red-Winged Blackbird when we reached the wetlands.

We did see more Killdeer

KldrGrding

than usual, and they were joined by a few Least Sandpipers

LstSndpiper1

at the pond.

LstSndpiper2

This time of year its unusual to spot Killdeer without also seeing migrating shorebirds. I wonder if shorebirds join them because, like the Canada Geese, they provide an early warning system. As we approach, the Killdeer warn of our imminent arrival while monitoring how close we are coming, while the shorebirds continue furiously feeding.

A week ago we saw large flocks of Gold Finches at Theler, but we didn’t see a single one on Sunday. Even the swallows seem to have disappeared, except for these two resting on the railing.

JvnileBrnSwlw

At first I worried that the juvenile might have trouble flying because it sat there huddled on the railing until we were much closer than usual, but as we approached the two lifted off without any apparent problem. I wondered if the parent was waiting for the youngster to gain strength before leaving for warmer country, because it’s clear it won’t be long before it will be too cold for insects around here, and we won’t see swallows until next Spring.

Sea Gulls and Baygulls

Though I focused on Marbled Godwits and Brown Pelicans in Westport this Sunday, gulls were everywhere, and the cry of hungry juvenile Glaucous-Winged Gulls filled the air.

I'mHungry

Judging from the look on this adult, I’m sure the parents were as tired of the constant noise as we were.

At Ruth’s memorial this weekend I was reminded that before I started birding seriously I referred to the many Glaucous-Winged Gulls that fed on the garbage left by beach visitors as “Seagulls.” Everyone I knew did, so it came as a shock when serious birders took offense at the name. Now that I’ve been birding for a while, I realize just how fallacious that name is. I’ve photographed gulls in amazing places, and very few of them were near the sea. So what do you call a gull that’s in Puget Sound? A Bay-Gull, as Diane suggested? Either that or you learn their official name like Heermann’s Gull,

HrmnsGl

the most common bird at Westport this weekend.

I can’t imagine the ocean without Gulls,

GraysHrmnsGlLndng

even if there sometimes seemed more on Salt Lake than on Puget Sound.

I still can’t but identify the gull in Jonathan Livingston Seagull with the garbage-eating Glaucous-Winged Gulls of my childhood, but I have found gulls much more interesting after I realized how many varieties of gulls there are.

A Spectacular Dive

I often think birding, and especially photographing birds, is a lot like fishing. On Sunday “the big one that got away” was a sequence with a Brown Pelican diving into the water while surrounded by Heermann’s Gulls. Unfortunately, it happened so far away that I had to drastically crop all the shots.

Since it still looks okay on the screen I decided to go ahead and post the sequence in hopes it will motivate some visitors to go to the coast and see it themselves.

I completely missed the first few passes, but once I realized what was going on I focused on a Pelican “hovering” mid-air.

DivngPlcn1

I managed to capture the dive before it hit the water,

DivngPlcn2

but didn’t quite capture the critical moment just as it first entered the water.

DivngPlcn3

I have photographed Brown Pelicans diving a couple of time before. What was really different this time, though, was how aggressive the gulls were in stealing part of the catch.

DivngPlcn4

I was surprised the Pelican seemed completely indifferent to the gulls,

DivngPlcn5

though the gulls were anything but indifferent to the Pelican.

DivngPlcn6

As we watched, more and more gulls gathered.

DivngPlcn7

This gull got so close that if I hadn’t seen it fly away, I would’ve sworn that the pelican had chopped its beak down on it.

DivngPlcn8

The most exciting shot of the day, though, was another spectacular plunge.

DivngPlcn9

If I hadn’t photographed this, I would never have believed a pelican would dive into the water this way.

At least once you’ve hooked a big one, you know it’s there and you’re motivated to keep coming back until you can catch it. I’ll be back at Westport soon trying to do a better job of catching this sequence.