November 27, 2019 - Thankful to Be Back in the Pacific Northwest

I was awake at 5:30, so got up on a 39º, calm, mostly cloudy morning.  The wind is supposed to pick up today.  I made coffees then headed out to Nisqually Refuge to join the “Wednesday Walk” birders for a day’s outing.  After being on the road and out of my ‘home range’ for several weeks, it is well to be back in the Pacific Northwest.

Several Refuge Volunteers help lead the walk, which begins at 8 a.m. at the Visitors’ Center each week on the Wednesday.  Here, volunteer Shep Thorp explains bird identification and behavior to one of the birding participants.

The “usual” track of the walk is through the orchard and out toward the estuary afterward.  However, today we worked our way toward the estuary boardwalk, as there was a morning high tide.  The flood pushes birds toward the dike and walkway, where we hope to get views of anything unusual, and better counts for the eBird report.

When the tide is out, this area is a mudflat, and the birds can be over ¼ mile away.  As it is, we often need spotting scopes for even the “close” birds.

The north end of the boardwalk itself is closed during the waterfowl hunting season.  Nisqually Refuge is owned by the federal U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and doesn’t allow hunting.  However, the adjacent “State marsh” is owned by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, which provides public hunting access.  Since the Feds built the estuary boardwalk out to the property boundary, they close the distal 215 meters of the boardwalk for the safety of the Refuge visitors during the three-month hunting season.

The waterfowl take the opportunity to feed in the intertidal zone, away from the hunters.

Great Blue Herons are opportunistic foragers.  When the tide is out, we can get good counts of this species feeding on fish and shore crabs in the mudflats.  When the tide is in, they move to the fields and freshwater marsh to feed on frogs, salamanders, garter snakes, and field mice (voles).

We returned as the tide ebbed, and birded along the east side of the Twin Barns boardwalk loop, stopping to scope the Nisqually River overlook and checking out the Riparian overlook.  Here, a Belted Kingfisher surveys the slough at the Riparian boardwalk for her lunch.

We ended up walking through the orchard in the afternoon.  The trees here are venerable, and were part of the old Brown’s Farm before the property was acquired by the Federal Refuge in 1974.  The current Refuge management has pretty well neglected this Heritage orchard, with the idea that the trees are not ‘native’.  In fact, they have planted ‘native’ firs and spruces amongst the apples and pears, that will quicken the demise of the old fruit trees.  It seems that a 100-year-old orchard might qualify under the provisions of the Antiquities Act, but . . . .

Often, bird activity here slows down after the morning ‘rush’, but today we saw several of our ‘target’ species, including great views of a Red-breasted Sapsucker.

The Nisqually Wednesday Bird Walk bunch is pretty friendly, welcoming, and informative.  Those attending include novice birders, experts to provide help to the novices, as well as a number of folks with a wide array of natural history expertise and training; sometimes, it’s not just about the birds!  And, it’s always about the people.  Hope to see you out here one of these Wednesdays.

Billy Frank Jr. Nisqually NWR eBird Checklist is Here

 

January 30 - Nisqually Refuge

I got up with the alarm at 5:45 this morning, and went out to Nisqually Refuge for the weekly bird walk.   The skies were clear, but temperatures were just at freezing, and frost highlighted the day.

This eagle posed with its wings extended to receive the warming rays of the rising sun

The standard route took us through the heritage orchard, where the group had good views of the resident Red-breasted Sapsucker.

Birders getting "Sapsucker Neck"

Richard "Digiscoping" the sapsucker

I don’t know if frosty weather causes the grasses to put more sugars or proteins into their leaves, but the Golden-crowned Sparrow flock spent quite a while grazing on the roadside grasses.

Grazing Golden-crowned Sparrow

After leaving the orchard, the path leads around a service road, then out along the west side of the boardwalk loop toward the Twin Barns.  Here, we watched a Song Sparrow doing a great imitation of a Nuthatch!

This is just such an odd posture for a Song Sparrow

These conks growing on a willow trunk caught my eye.  This appears to be a species of Polypore Phellinus igniarius.

"Willow Bracket" Phellinus igniarius

The fungus causes a condition known as “white rot” which causes the wood to decay.  Woodpeckers know that these trees will have softer wood in which to burrow nesting holes, or might have subsequent infestations of ants or beetle larvae.

After a snack stop at the Barns, we ventured out onto the north dike, separating the estuary marsh from the remaining freshwater marsh and fields.  Here we have good views of the usual herons and waterfowl

Obligatory Great Blue Heron photo

This Green-winged Teal pair must be going to the Baths to get the mud off their bellies

Northern Pintail drake

Northern Pintail hen

At the base of the estuary boardwalk, we saw a Song Sparrow that was from one of the lighter-plumaged populations.

Shep eBirded it as M.m. montana/merrilli, but we will submit the observation to the Washington Bird Records Committee folks.  It is certainly from a different subspecies than the usual west coast birds, which are more chocolate-colored.

As we went out onto the estuary boardwalk, the fog rolled in

How do you see birds in this?

The fog lifted here and there to reveal birds and seals

But, then it would roll back in.

We did get good views of gulls, waterfowl, and shorebirds

"Olympic Gull" - Glaucous-winged X Western gull

Adult Ring-billed Gull

Eurasian Wigeon drake and an American Wigeon hen

Least Sandpiper - the world's smallest sandpiper

With the high tide, I heard a Refuge visitor say something along the lines of “look at the scum”, presuming that he was seeing a polluted body of water.

Diatoms, not "scum"

In fact, the floating brown ‘scum’ is an accumulation of diatoms, which are single-celled algae which have a cell wall of silica.  These algae blooms provide the primary food base for many of the ‘higher’ animals on the mud flats.

Participants on the walk tend to drop out or move ahead of the volunteer trip leaders, but we had about 8 of the two dozen continue to the Nisqually River overlook,

and back to the Visitors’ Center where we began.

On the way back, we saw a "White Collar" Robin . . .

As we were tallying the day’s sightings, we noticed a Red-eared Slider sunning itself along the pond bank.  These have to be tough critters to be out on a January day that barely made it into the 40s.

Red-eared Slider, Trachemys scripta, is a non-native exotic species

The End

 Nisqually eBird Checklist is Here