December 11, 2019 - Nisqually in the Drizzle

Today, about 20 birders arrived for the weekly Wednesday bird walk at Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge on a morning in the mid-40s.  We had a mostly dry session, with some intermittent light drizzle.  I have made an effort to attend this birding venue as often as I can when I’m not roaming around the country.  Good people, and Good Birding.

The pond levels in the Puget Trough continue to rise with the late fall rains, and there are a lot of waterfowl to be seen here at the Refuge.

Most of the waterfowl we see are geese or “dabbling” ducks.  The dabblers are the field and surface-feeding birds, rather than “diving” ducks.

We tend to see the diving ducks in the deeper waters along the McAllister Creek estuary, in the deeper ponds, or in the Nisqually River itself, where foraging opportunities are better for those species.

The tide was at 11 a.m., but it was only a +7.7-foot low water.  So, while we had a lot of mud when we first arrived at the north dike and estuary, the tide flooded pretty quickly toward a 13.3-foot high.

When the tide is most of the way in, the water pushes the waterfowl and shorebirds ‘inland’, which allows us Birders closer views of birds that otherwise would have remained ‘way out on the flats.

The Refuge removed the old outer dike about a dozen years ago, to restore the estuary and improve habitat for ESA-threatened Chinook salmon.  Many of the trees that had grown behind the previous dike have died and provide perches for birds of prey.  It often takes a view through a spotting scope (or large camera lens) to get identification on birds that are over ¼ mile away.

Here, the birds are seen to be a pair of Peregrine Falcons.  Nowadays, we see several birds of this species throughout the winter, and have to remember that these birds suffered badly from eggshell thinning, and that they (and we) benefit from the 1972 ban on the use of DDT pesticides in the United States (Thank you, Richard Nixon…) and subsequent restoration efforts.

Hundreds of gulls use the Refuge’s estuaries, tidal marshes and river banks.  It is a challenge here, in the heart of the “Olympic Gull” distribution, to sort through the large, pink-footed gulls.  Puget Sound’s resident and wintering gulls are mostly hybrids between Glaucous-winged and Western Gulls.  Individual birds run the gamut in their physical characteristics between the two taxa.

Visitors to our region from “away" often wish to ‘twitch’ a Western or Glaucous-winged Gull on their Life Lists, and are disappointed to find that there are few ‘pure’ birds to be found.  On the other hand, ‘Gulling’ here can certainly sharpen one’s skills.  The birds in the photo above show the muddy heads characteristic of winter-plumaged Glaucous-winged Gulls, but have much darker grey mantles and not-quite-black wing-tips that would be expected in a ‘pure’ Western Gull.  “Just” hybrids . . .

Thank Goodness, the Ring-billed Gulls are rarely hybridized with other species, and are easily identified by the black ring near the tip of their bill.

You would think that the chill mist and showers would keep the passerine activity to a minimum, but we saw over 60 species total, and the passerines gave a good show.  The locally-wintering “Sooty” Fox Sparrows gave us especially good views.  Our coastal Fox Sparrows are dark chocolate brown, rather than having the reddish plumage that the “foxy” eastern subspecies have.

The Anna’s Hummingbirds were also showing off.  Forty years ago, seeing a hummingbird in the winter would have been unheard-of.  But, with the warming of the climate over the past several years, this species has expanded its range north from its ‘stronghold’ in California, into the Willamette Valley in the 1970s, the Puget Trough in the 1980s, and is now not that uncommon in the lower mainland of British Columbia and all the way to Alaska!

Our local Song Sparrows are likewise much darker than their inland and eastern conspecifics.  Besides our resident nesting birds, we also see wintering birds from the more northern coastal subspecies.  One of these days, I will make an effort to see if I can tell the several races apart.

The Refuge Volunteers lead a bird walk every Wednesday, meeting at 8 a.m. at the Visitors’ Center.  Come join us if you get the opportunity!

Nisqually NWR eBird checklist is Here

 

 

December 10, 2019 - Rustic Beauty

When I got home from a dentist appointment, I read a post to the Tweeters listserv that“Christy Kuhlman found and photographed a Rustic Bunting at Cape Disappointment on December 3rd. It was with a flock of juncos at campsite #44.”

Wow!  A Rustic Bunting would be a “Life Bird” for me (and would certainly keep me in the running for remaining in the “top ten” of the number of species seen by eBirders in the American Birding Association area this year).  The Rustic Bunting is an “Old World” bird, breeding across northern Eurasia from Scandinavia to eastern Siberia, and spending its winters in Japan and eastern China.  Occasionally, an individual makes the migration down the west Coast of North America, and this is one of those birds.

I decided to drive on down to the Cape to look for a Rustic Bunting that had been seen there a week ago.  There’s never assurance that a wayward bird will stick around for a while, or if it will just be a “one-day-wonder”.  And, the term “Cape Disappointment” can’t bode well, can it?

It’s a two and a half hour drive from Olympia to the Cape, where the mighty Columbia River passes into the Pacific Ocean.  The north side of the river mouth is in the State Park, and I arrived a little after noon.

The bird had been seen among flocks of juncos in the campground loops.  There are few people camping in the 45º F rain and mist.  Even the yurts are unoccupied.

What was surprising was the birds on the ground!  Sparrows and juncos commonly feed on the ground, but today the park’s grounds were literally crawling with Townsend’s Warblers, Chestnut-backed Chickadees, and Red-breasted Nuthatches.

The phenology of the area’s Sitka Spruce trees  was just right for their cones to release millions of small, winged seeds.  This bounty brought the “tree-top” birds to the ground, and provided some great views.  Many of the birds continued to feed in the spruce boughs, of course.

Finally, at 1 p.m., I observed the bird with a large mixed flock of Oregon Juncos, Chestnut-back ed Chickadee & Townsend's Warblers at campsite No. 118.  The flock was pretty 'flighty' and spooked easily, so I stayed back and let some of the other birders in the area know that I’d found it.  That means that you get to see crappy, cropped photos . . . Better than nothing, yes?

This bunting is distinguished by a white stripe above and behind the eye, with white under the dark “cheek patch”.  This bird was, indeed, a “Lifer” for me, my 662^nd species in North America (north of Mexico), and the 610^th species I’d seen this year.  I’ve now seen 91 avian species in my “Peregrination” year that I’d never before seen, and this bird is certainly the icing on the cake.

At 3 p.m. the Bunting showed again at campsite No. 64.  And those of us who re-found it alerted the other birders.

A Portland Birder and I each *may* have scattered a bit of birdseed to encourage site fidelity in the area . . .

It was a day well-spent with some good birders from Washington and Oregon.  All involved hoped that the bird would stay in the area to be included on the Columbia Estuary Christmas Bird Count on December 15th.  That would be a great “twitch” on the Count:  Best of Luck!!

Cape Disappointment State Park eBird checklist is Here

 

 

December 9, 2019 - The Emperor's Goose

It was cloudy and calm and 45º when we got up this morning.  I made coffees, wished Marty a Happy Birthday, and saw her off to work.  Then, after finishing a bowl of cold cereal, I drove up the Canal to Sequim, where I wanted to see if I could find the Emperor Goose that’d been seen in the Dungeness Bay area.

I’d “dipped” on seeing the adult Emperor at Sauvie’s Island a few days ago, and thought that I might try to find the young bird that's being seen up in Clallam County.  The eBird reports of this northern species had been coming in sporadically from all around the Bay, so I arbitrarily decided to start at the Clallam County Park at Cline Spit, where I arrived around 10:30 in the morning.  The Park is a little gem that provides a view into the inner part of Dungeness Bay.  It’s bordered by private property, and the landowners are adamant about letting park visitors know about that fact.

There are “No Trespassing” signs at the nearby Dungeness Landing County Park, as well.  It’s sad that the landowners have had to post their property, likely due to poor behavior by visitors to the public property.  The seagulls don’t seem to care.  In any event, I could not find the goose from this vantage point.

Being unsuccessful in finding the single member of this species known to humans in the State of Washington, I determined to walk out the long Dungeness Spit and hope for a view from the north side of the bay.  On my drive over, I crossed paths with Snohomish County birders Jon Houghton, Blair Bernson and Cindy Bailey, who were also looking for “The Goose”.

Access to Dungeness Spit is through the Dungeness Recreation Area, which is yet another Clallam County Park.  Parking is at the north end of the County property, with a half-mile trail access into the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge through the forest and down to the sand spit.

The Forest Trail arrives at the beach at the west base of Dungeness Spit, a long arm of sand and cobble stretching into the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

The “inside” of the spit is reserved as a sanctuary for birds, leaving the outer beach on the Strait side for the public to walk out as far as they feel comfortable; the lighthouse is 5-½ miles out.

I set up the scope and scanned, seeing a nice flock of Dunlin, mixed with Sanderlings and Black-bellied Plover. 

Then, improbably, I saw the goose swimming toward a little point of gravel that was covered with hundreds of shorebirds. 

It waded right up onto the cobble beach!

I gave a quick call to Blair, and they rushed out.  Sadly, right after I called, a float plane landed and then took off from the Bay, and the goose flushed.

When they arrived at the beach, I met them with the sad news, and we set up our spotting scopes for another look around the Bay.

Again improbably, the goose had returned to land just south of the sand spit, and swam toward us!  All of us had great views of this bird.

Washington Bird Records Committee Member Ryan Merrill noted that there were certainly records prior to the “first” in ’99.  But the species has been seen much less frequently in recent years, so that it now needs to be documented.  This is only the 14th occurrence of Emperor Goose in Washington, since the Committee first added the species to the State’s Checklist in 1999.  It is also the first time I’d seen one since the late 1980s, when one spent the winter in the Willamette Valley.  Interestingly, the Emperor Goose is not a species that is even on the “Review List” for birders in Oregon!

This is an immature bird, obviously moulting into its “pre-formative”, or adult, plumage.  The feathering of the head will become bright white, and the body feathering will turn more ‘solid’, and the bill will turn solid pink.

With success on finding the Goose achieved, Blair et al. and I took our leave of the Dungeness spit.  I stopped at the Old Three Crabs site.  This used to be a great little tourist stop on the Peninsula back in the day, after the restaurant was built in 1958.

The restaurant and property was sold to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife in 2012, who razed the building, pulled the septic tanks, and partnered with local conservation groups to restore the shoreline and estuary.  This project improved salmon and steelhead access to valuable estuarine and off-channel habitat by enhancing and stabilizing the connection between Meadowbrook Creek and the mainstem of the Dungeness River.  This work was part of the continuing effort to restore the floodplain and estuarine habitat of the lower Dungeness River, and increase available rearing and transitional habitat for salmonids.

There weren’t a lot of birds there when I stopped in the late afternoon, but this is one of the easiest places to see Eurasian Wigeon mixed in the flocks of American Wigeon.  Even with only 45 wigeon in attendance, I got a crappy picture of the female Eurasian, which has a russet face, rather than the gray face of the Americans.

It was a great day.  The Emperor Goose was the 609^th Species I’ve seen this year, and I’m still in contention to finish in the “top ten” of the eBirders in the American Birding Association area.  Now, I had to go home and make it up to Marty for my going Bird-watching on her Birthday . . . 

Cline Spit eBird checklist is Here

Oyster House eBird checklist is Here

Dungeness Forest Trail eBird checklist is Here

Dungeness Spit eBird checklist is Here

Three Crabs eBird checklist is Here