Category: Washington Coast

Godwits at Bottle Beach

Wednesday’s trip to the coast was highlighted by the arrival of Godwits at the beach, the first time I’ve seen them at Bottle Beach and the first time I’ve ever observed them feeding. Usually I’ve photographed them standing on the docks in Tokeland, waiting for the tide to go out so they can fly off and resume feeding.

They arrived in a large flock that quickly dispersed into much smaller flocks

Godwits Landing

that moved up and down the beach.

At times they worked as groups,

Godwits feeding

catching everything to be had.

However, as another birder noted, the flock was extremely noisy, almost raucous. Some seemed downright pushy, trying to intimidate nearby godwits,

Godwits Fighting

while totally ignoring other, smaller birds foraging nearby.

It wasn’t at all unusual, though, to see a solitary godwit quietly probing,

Solitary Godwit

far from the maddening flock, seemingly caught up in self-reflection.

Birding the Washington Coast

Wednesday’s trip to the coast started off rather inauspiciously, just as my trip two weeks earlier had done. The skies were clear when I left Tacoma, but by the time I reached Elma I had a hard time seeing the road because the fog was so thick. Occasional patches of sunshine, however, gave me hope that it might actually be clear when I reached Bottle Beach.

It wasn’t to be, at least not at first. The fog was so thick when I first got there that I had a hard time seeing the water at all. Just how thick it was became clear when I heard a flock of Canada Geese at 8:45 and turned to take a quick shot:

Geese in Fog

Surprisingly, the picture wasn’t blurry, probably because it was a uniform gray and I was panning desperately as they passed just above my head. The picture is actually a tad grayer than it seemed to my eyes, but I was really surprised that I got a picture at all.

Luckily, the fog was burning off rapidly by then, and this shot of a flock of Godwits landing taken at 8:50 was clearer,

Flock of Godwits in light fog

though it still lacked color.

I ended up trashing nearly all the pictures I took the first hour because the exposure caused graininess, but by 9:32 when I took this shot of another small flight of Canada Geese

Canda Geese in Flight

the lighting was nearly ideal. coming directly over my shoulder onto the birds lining the shore.

All I had to worry about by then was blowing out the highlights in the white feathers:

Least Sandpiper

I’ve certainly seen more birds and rarer birds, but it was a great day, perhaps because birding has been so slow around here lately.

Brown Pelicans in Breeding Colors

Wednesday’s trip to the Beach included, as always, a quick drive down to Tokeland, to see the Godwits, and there was a small flock of them sitting on the piers.

Marbled Godwit

The highlight of the visit, though, was the huge number of Brown Pelicans that were there, all in different stages of breeding colors.

The hardest thing was getting a picture of just one Pelican, a picture without various body parts jutting out from the frame. One way was to capture one in flight,

Brown Pelican Flying

which was easier than usual because it was bright enough that I could use a high shutter speed without creating much grain. This might be one of the best shots I’ve ever gotten of a Brown Pelican flying, particularly in breeding colors.

And I managed to get at least one shot of a pelican floating far enough away from a dock that he wasn’t partly obscured.

Brown Pelican

And though I’m not as excited by this shot, I did manage to get a shot of one standing alone on a post.

Pelican on Post

Strangely, after all my efforts to isolate the birds, my favorite shot turns out to be this one of three pelicans in different stages of breeding colors,

Three Pelicans in Various Breeding Colors

though I had to use a little Photoshop magic to eliminate a gull from the picture before I was happy with it.

A Sunny Day at the Coast

With a major winter storm predicted in the Pacific Northwest last week, I wasn’t going to miss any opportunity to get out in the sun. So, I went to the beach last Wednesday, even though birding had been reported slow.

It was slow, but the sunshine and 65° temperature more than compensated for a lack of birds. It’s hard to get that combination at the beach even in the summer where high temperatures often draw in fog, creating cool temperatures and poor lighting.

There were signs that winter is near. Ducks were plentiful, though the distant boom of shotguns being fired didn’t make it easy to get pictures. Simply showing up caused ducks, wisely, to fly so far out that good photos were impossible to get.

Widgeons Flying

Still, I did see one of my favorite birds. There were loons everywhere you looked in Westport, delightfully close to the docks:

Common Loon

There were actually several different types of scoters in Westport, but I only managed to get closeups of this male Surf Scoter,

male Surf Scoter

and this female Surf Scoter.

female Surf Scoter