Month: July 2019

Pelican Feeding Frenzy

After we finished birding Tokeland, we headed back to Westport thinking that Logan would be returning before too long.  Until he returned, I thought I would try to get better pictures of the Brown Pelicans.  It took several stops, but I finally found a spot where they were fishing. There were so many pelicans that I got multiple chances to get the “perfect” picture.  I never did get it, but I came a lot closer than I have in the past.  It turns out that it is extremely hard to predict the moment a pelican begins its dive.

They spend a lot of time suspended mid-air like this, but more often than not they decide not to dive and continue looking for another fish.

It turned out, for me at least, that the best chance of catching one diving was to look for a spot where another pelican had just hit the water.

If you focused long enough another pelican would often join the feast.

Sometimes two more would join 

and then another.

I was most surprised to see how many gulls tried to join the feast.  I don’t think I saw a single pelican catch a fish without being joined by a gull.

And a Marbled Godwit, Too

I’ve been to Tokeland several times since the new dock was installed and the channel was dredged, and the birding has generally been rather disappointing compared to what it was like before construction.

If the day I was there is any indication, birding my actually be improving.  Right after I discovered the Willet, this Marbled godwit showed  up in nearly the same area. 

Though it’s perhaps the first time I can remember seeing a single Godwit, it seemed to readily find food and stuck around for quite awhile.  I’m not sure what this was in his beak, but it looked like some kind if enormous worm.

He really seemed to be boring into the sand searching for food.  

Although I didn’t manage to get a shot of Pelicans that I thought was worth keeping, a small flock did show up before we left.

All in all, it was a very successful side-trip, and the birding just kept getting better the rest of the day.  

Birding Tokeland

I felt a little guilty about not going our fishing with Logan, but not guilty enough to overcome the sense that it would be stupid to pay $250 to spend the afternoon throwing up like the last time I went salmon fishing on the ocean.  So, after a quick breakfast, Leslie and I set out to entertain ourselves for 6-8 hours while Logan enjoyed himself.  

We drove down to Tokeland to see if the Godwits or the pelicans were there. They weren’t there when we arrived.  In fact, other than an awful lot of gulls, there only seemed to be a pair of Pigeon Guillemots who didn’t immediately take off when I focused on them.

After spending 10 or 15 minutes taking photos of them, I decided that I would head back to Westport to check out the pelicans again.  

Just as a I approached the car where Leslie was reading her iPad, a large shorebird that I didn’t recognize zipped by me. Irritated by the fact that I had somehow failed to spot it on the shore, I walked up the road from the dock scanning the shoreline.  

I was quite surprised to spot a lone Willet foraging.

I was even more surprised to see it pick up a very muddy crab, walk over to the water and 

drop it in the water, leave it for a moment, and carefully pick it  back up and quickly

down it.  I’ve been looking at shorebirds for quite awhile now, but that’s the first time I’ve ever seen one eat a crab, much less rinse its food off.

I got another surprise when I walked back to the car to tell Leslie it was worth getting out of the car.  A Pigeon Guillemot was sitting on the railing looking down.  Trying to figure out what it was looking out, I noticed this Pigeon Guillemot frantically flapping its wings.  

Although I never saw a nest, I’m pretty sure that the pair were nesting under the newly built dock, which made me wonder if the county had build nest boxes there like they had in Fort Worden.

We Took Logan to Westport

I expected that all of Logan’s local fishing outings would be merely a prelude to his Westport fishing trip.  Unexpectedly, it turned out that all of my local bird sightings were nothing compared to the two days we spent at Westport.

All I really hoped, and expected, to see on this visit was the Brown Pelicans. Strangely, there wasn’t a one in sight when we started walking out on the Westport Marina, making me wonder if they still hadn’t arrived.  

On our walk back to the parking lot, though, a few stragglers flew over and I managed to get some nice shots of them in bright sunlight.  I liked the lighting in this shot best, 

preferred the wing angle in this shot  but was disappointed in the dull colors, 

and loved this shot showing how long those wings really are (but hated the excessive shadows.)

As expected, overall there were very few birds in the harbor.   The only other bird I saw the first afternoon was this Pigeon Guillemot carrying a small fish in its beak. 

Luckily, the weather was so nice that it was simply impossible to complain about the lack of birds.  With sunshine and temperatures in the mid-70’s, it doesn’t get much better than that at Westport.