Theler Wetlands in Belfair isn’t nearly as exciting as many of the place we’ve missed so far this year, like Malheur or Big Beef Creek, but it seems like home while birding. Though it’s not where I started birding, I’ve been birding there semi-regularly since 2005 — which I discovered by looking it up over there in the right margin under Special Places.
When I first started birding and didn’t have all the aids to identify birds that I now use regularly, I got a shot of a Red Crossbill but misidentified it (something I’m afraid I’ve been guilty of many times in the past 15 years of birding). I’m reminded of all this because we were greeted at the beginning of our walk by this Red Crossbill on a recent visit to Theler:
A little later we spotted this female Red Crossbill, which I didn’t recognize until I enlarged the shot on my computer.
I was so busy trying to get shots of all the song birds we saw that I didn’t even notice this Bald Eagle right above us until another walker pointed it out to us.
I’ll have to admit that I was a lot more thrilled by the photos of the Crossbills than I was by this shot of a Bald Eagle. Eagles seem almost as common as crows here in the Pacific Northwest.