It’s All About the Kids

Summer tends to be a rather slow time for birding at Theler, but there are lots of birds there all the time; it’s just harder to see them this time of year because no one is advertising for a mate and parents are busy tryingI(t’ to feed their young and don’t have time to sit around posing for visitors.  So, on this trip we mostly saw juveniles, which are sometimes/always  hard to identify.

I could tell from their behavior and their beaks that this was a pair of young mergansers, but I have no idea if they’re Common Mergansers or Red-Breasted Mergansers.

I am pretty sure this is a juvenile Song Sparrow because of  the breast plumage and where I saw it, but I also know that a lot of juvenile sparrows look alike.  

This one, for instance, looks rather similar and was in the same area, but the yellow eyebrows make me think it’s most likely an immature Savannah Sparrow.

This guy was on the same railing near the immature sparrows, but I am almost-absolutely sure that it is a Barn Swallow because it looks like one and, more importantly, because there was a parent guarding nearby.  

This Feels Like Home

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.

Seabeck Through The Rear-View Mirror

I have a habit of always arriving early, no matter where I go.  Perhaps I learned that in the Army, but, if so, I probably learned it too well. So well, that I always arrive at Big Beef Creek an hour, or more, earlier than the eagles and herons show up.  Luckily, there are always interesting things to see there if you look hard enough.  

I think this is the first American Goldfinch shot that I got this year.  

This inquisitive Harbor Seal must have entertained me for at least a half hour as it hunted fish in the shallow water.

Long before the show officially begins prominent actors in the drama fly across the stage, apparently as anxious as I for the show to start.

You know the curtain is about to raise when the Great Blue Herons begin to take up strategic fishing spots.

For me, the highlight of the show is the interaction of the Bald Eagles and the Great Blue Herons.

More often than not, the Great Blue Herons will drop their catch and squawk in outrage.  Remarkably, in all the time I’ve watched the scene I’ve never seen a heron get hit by an eagle, even when it refuses to drop its catch.  

I’ve Fallen Behind and Can’t Catch Up

Though I can think of a thousand reasons (many I really don’t want to dwell on) why I haven’t blogged lately, I’ll just say that I really wanted to focus on this series of shots I took at Seabeck but I didn’t want to put in the time that it took to get it ready.  This was originally a sequence of thirty-or-so shots (obviously I should have been shooting a video not taking single shots) of Bald Eagles interacting at Seabeck that I took a few weeks ago.  The shots were taken at a considerable distance, so I had to go through several steps to make each shot good enough to post.  In the end, I narrowed it down to these six shots.  

I began by just taking a shot of this Bald Eagle holding a flounder in its beak.

Instead of calmly eating it’s catch, it looked up and started to fly away.

Surprisingly, it dropped its fish and readied  to 

fend off an attacker trying to steal its catch.

The battle raged for a few seconds before a juvenile Bald Eagle landed, trying to sneak away with a meal while the other two fought.

The scuffle that followed was nearly impossible to follow; all I know for sure is that one of the adult Bald Eagles flew off with the fish while the immature Bald Eagle and other adult hassled each other.

The scuffle was definitely the highlight of what, unfortunately, turned out to be a rather dull outing.  It was clear that I had missed the Sculpin Run and things were beginning to slow down considerably.