Category: Special Places

Birding the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge

We’ve just returned from an interesting trip to Santa Rosa.  Originally I’d been planning the trip to get away from the constant rain we have been having this Winter in the Pacific Northwest and to get in some serious birding — though Leslie may have had slightly different plans.  

We definitely didn’t escape the rain.  Although it was clear when we left home, the rain increased the further south we went.  Just south of Mt. Shasta, we rain into such heavy rain that I considered trying to find a place to pull off the freeway because cars were whipping by me at 70+ miles an hour while I was doing 50 in the slow lane because I couldn’t see more than 20 yards in front of us with my windshield wipers running at full speed.  My caution was confirmed a few miles down the road when we spotted several fire engines, medical vehicles and highway patrol cars trying to clear a multi-car crash scene that had traffic backed up for almost twenty miles.

Luckily, the weather had improved the next morning when we headed out to the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge. It wasn’t raining, but heavy clouds covered most of the sky, though the sun was just rising in the East, creating an Alpen Glow that made Leslie’s early shots quite beautiful.  

Leslie didn’t realize that she got a shot of an American Bittern in disguise mode.  She told me later that she was just practicing focusing the camera.  

As it turned out, Leslie got a lot of shots of birds that I didn’t see out my side of the car, like this Mourning Dove.

I did see the Black-necked Stilts. I couldn’t get a shot of them, but Leslie got a nice shot.

The light got increasingly challenging as we drove around the auto tour, but I was still jealous that Leslie spotted these three Snipes that I didn’t see.

In my defense, there was so much contrast between the sky and ground that these birds were nearly indistinguishable from the background until I worked with them in Lightroom and Photoshop, one of the benefits of shooting in RAW. Unfortunately, even Lightroom and Photoshop couldn’t make this shot as good as those taken in the good light we had 15 minutes earlier.

Birding Fort Worden

When I started birding at Ft. Flagler many years ago, that was the only place I would bird.  When Leslie accompanied me, we spent the rest of the day shopping for art studios and eating at favorite restaurants.  In the last few years, though, we have started going to Fort Worden after eating and shopping because we often see birds there that seldom appear at Flagler

For instance, I’m more apt to see Red-breasted Mergansers, like these three that we saw quite aways offshore, at Fort Woden than at Ft. Flagler.

The bird on the left is a female Red-Breasted Merganser, and the one on the right is clearly a male in breeding plumage.  The one in the center is harder to identify.  At a distance, I thought it was a female, but when I blew it up on screen it became clear that it was actually a male transitioning to breeding plumage. 

Some of my all-time favorite shots are of male, Red-breasted Merganser, partially because I seldom see them up close.  Unfortunately, that was the case with these three.  Despite waiting nearly twenty minutes,  they never came closer than this.

Luckily, this Double-crested Cormorant wasn’t nearly as shy.  It was so close that the photo was merged from two shots because I couldn’t fit it into a single shot.

It even cooperated by posing directly in the afternoon sun.

This female Belted Kingfisher, unlike most Kingfishers, who are notoriously shy and uncooperative, was remarkably cooperative.  I took this shot from the same spot I took the cormorant picture, but the sunlight was coming from behind the Kingfisher rather than shining directly on it.

I got another shot of the same bird on the way back to the car; this time, it was sitting on the same cement wall that the cormorant had been on, and the sun was coming over my shoulder directly onto the Kingfisher.

Trying to adjust the color of the two birds so they looked the same proved impossible, which reminded me once again just how critical the quality of the light is to photography.  

Back to Ft. Flagler

It’s been a long, rainy winter here in the Pacific Northwest, so we haven’t gotten up to Ft. Flagler and Port Townsend this winter. Cloudy skies were predicted, but I decided we would take our chances and go to Port Townsend.  I told my grandson I was thinking of heading up there, and he said we should stop and see him at the Firehouse where he has been working for the last couple of years.  So, even though it looked a little unpredictable when we got up, I decided I would go anyway. I’m glad we did because the firehouse tour was the highlight of our trip.  Luckily, Leslie got pictures of our visit and posted them to her Facebook pages because I was too busy talking and looking to remember to take pictures.

We arrived a little later than usual at Ft. Flagler only to be confronted by some of the coldest temperatures I’ve ever encountered there.  To make matters even more interesting, it was also one of the highest tides we have ever seen. If the tide had risen any higher, I don’t think we could have made it to the point, and most of the birds we saw were near the point, all huddled together trying to stay out of the wind.

The first and most common birds we encountered were Sanderlings running up and down the shoreline.

A little further up the beach, we began to run into Black-bellied Plovers still in winter plumage

interspersed with Dunlin, smaller than the Plovers but larger than the Sanderlings.

I didn’t go all the way to the end of the point because the birds were packed in so densely that I didn’t want to disturb them.  I did go far enough to get a shot of the Brant that are often found feeding on the seaweed found between the two points. 

Naturally, the light improved as we got back to the car, while small, mixed flocks of Plovers and Dunlin ran across the lawn

My favorite birds at Flagler are the Harlequin Ducks, but sadly we only spotted a single pair, and they were too far away to get a decent shot of them.  

Reviewing the photos I took, it was probably one of the more disappointing trips we’ve taken to Ft. Flagler, but considering how seldom we managed to get out in the last few months it was a very enjoyable visit. We definitely look forward to getting out more soon.

Almost a Flop

Since we were out of town during most of the Spring Shorebird Migration, I have been trying to see the Fall Migration, but I’m not having much more luck than I did in the Spring even though we haven’t gone anywhere recently.  

Since we had seen some shorebirds on our walks at Theler Wetlands, I thought I would drive to the Washington Coast July 13th and see what we could see.  We started at Ocean Shores where we saw some Cormorants way out on the point, but they’re year-round residents so they hardly count.  We walked nearly two miles on the beach and all we saw were a few Seagulls, 

and, somewhat surprisingly, a small flock of Turkey Vultures that took off as we approached

except for a single one that refused to leave a dead Harbor Seal.

Luckily, the trip wasn’t a complete waste of time as we had some Delicious Sushi at Umi Sushi and finally got to visit Elissa Whittleton and her husband’s art exhibit at the Gallery of Ocean Shores.

We had slightly better birding at Westport where we spotted several Brown Pelicans fishing right outside the harbor.

A few even flew overhead, giving me a chance to practice my tracking skills.

 

We saw another small flock of Brown Pelicans at Tokeland — and an even smaller flock of shorebirds feeding on the mud flats.  

If our sole purpose of going to the beach was to get shots of birds, this trip was a FLOP, but a sunny day at the beach is always a treat, especially in the Pacific Northwest where such days are rare.