Shaw Island

We've gotten in the habit of going on a weekend camping trip near Keith's birthday, and this year the plan was to visit nearby Shaw Island. Amazingly, despite spending at least parts of every summer in the San Juans for the last 13 years and despite the fact that it's served by the Washington State Ferry, it's an island I've never been to. It was time to remedy that! Unfortunately, our plans got cut short due to Keith coming down with a bad cough and we had to bail early, but we still had time to enjoy the island a little bit.

Sign at the Shaw Island ferry terminal. Shaw became the 10th island I've set foot on in the San Juan Islands.

The campground, part of a county park and the only public lands on Shaw, is perched on a wooded cliff above the beach. Indian Beach is a rare sandy beach - most of our shorelines are rocky.

As we walked the beach, I saw something I've never seen before: a hummingbird taking a bath in a tiny waterfall!

Afterwards, it stuck its tongue out at me, perhaps for photographing such a private moment:

There were actually three hummingbirds flying about, as well as a recently fledged group of house wrens, olive-sided and Pacific-slope flycatchers, orange-crowned warblers, white-crowned sparrows, and spotted towhees.

It was amazing to see dozens and dozens of tent caterpillars crawling around on the driftwood. This year has seen an explosion of tent caterpillars, and many local gardeners are happy that their season is coming to an end. We actually found some cocoons that I've assuming are from the tent caterpillars.

We had a peek-a-boo view of the water from our campsite, where we could watch the ferries going by:

In the morning we knew we were going to pack up and catch a ferry back home, but we still had a couple hours to explore the island a little bit. We walked to Reef Net Point, where I heard a Hutton's vireo (163) to add to my year list. (I erroneously stated in an earlier blog post that I had added Hutton's vireo, but it was a typo on my part, as it was Cassin's vireo I added at that point!) In the campground I also heard a Steller's jay to add to my county list - not a species I'm likely to see or hear while on San Juan Island.

There were lots of foxglove in bloom everywhere:

Driving around the island, it really reminded me of Waldron Island, but with paved roads. The population on Shaw is about double that of Waldron (165 to 80 or so), but they both have limited public facilities (no lodging or restaurants - though Shaw does have a general store and public campground). Both islands have small schools, post offices, and grassy airstrips.

I also don't remember seeing a fire station on Waldron, but it doesn't look like this one on Shaw sees too much activity:

At least the weather was beautiful for our ferry ride back to Friday Harbor. We had a stop at Orcas Island and I took this photo that I love of the Orcas ferry landing:

Here's the scene as we pulled back into Friday Harbor:

After a fairly sleepless night, we both has to spend part of the sunny afternoon taking a nap, but I wasn't about to let the entire day go to waste. After dinner I headed down to American Camp, where I was amazed at how much I saw in one hour before sunset - the next post will feature photos of that excursion!

Orcas Island Birthday Weekend ~ Part 2

We stayed at The Cabin on Spring Bay, and spent the afternoon Saturday hiking the trails on the property or enjoying the views out the front windows. Here's a picture I took from the water's edge looking back towards the cabin:

The property sits between two ridges, and the trail we took started by climbing up one of the ridges and looking over towards Obstruction Island:

There seems to be more deer on Orcas Island than on San Juan. On Saturday we counted more than 30 for the day! Many of those were at Spring Bay.

Not all the mule deer on Orcas Island look like our San Juan deer, either - numerous animals are speckled with varying amounts of white. I assumed that maybe this was from in-breeding, although I questioned my own theory since I know deer do swim between the islands, which should help diversify the gene pool. After doing a little research, it sounds like the story is that at some point there were one or several pure white deer introduced or otherwise brought to the island. These cross-bred with the native mule deer, creating these variable color morphs. Doesn't this deer also look a little small (young) for this time of year?

There were so many deer around, it seemed like anywhere you looked, you could find one if you looked hard enough.

Back to our hike around Spring Bay.....it was one of those great walks where there's lots of everything to look at. Mushrooms:

Mammals - this is a native Douglas squirrel, much nicer than the large non-native fox squirrels that are most common around Portland. We don't have squirrels on San Juan Island! (Okay, there is a small population of flying squirrels on San Juan, but I've never seen one.)

And birds - the highlight was this barred owl:

We talked to the owner and he said he's only seen maybe three barred owls in the 20 years he's lived there. Nice find! Some other highlights included a pileated woodpecker, and the horned grebes and hooded mergansers that spent a lot of time in the bay itself. Overall, we saw close to 30 species from or around the cabin.

The Saturday evening sunset was pretty stunning:

Right before we left to have a delicious celebratory birthday dinner at the New Leaf Cafe in Eastsound, the moon became visible, too.

Overall it was a fantastic weekend!

Orcas Island Birthday Weekend ~ Part 1

Yesterday (Sunday) was my birthday, and this year I got an extended celebration with a weekend trip to a nearby Orcas Island. When we got on the ferry on Friday afternoon it was pouring rain, and I figured that at least we had a nice cabin to stay in and watch the showers if that's what the weekend had in store. By the time we pulled in to the Orcas ferry landing, however, it had slowed to a drizzle, and by the time we drove to Cascade Lake the rain had stopped altogether. We decided to hike the 2.7 mile trail around the lake, and the weather mostly held off. There were still lots of low-lying clouds hanging in the trees around the lake, making for some especially scenic (and iconic Pacific Northwest) views.

There were lots of Pacifc wrens, golden-crowned kinglets, dark-eyed junocs, and chestnut-backed chickadees in the woods. We even saw a bald eagle fly out of the forest, but the lake itself was pretty empty until we came to this bridge that separated the main part of the lake from a smaller offshoot. In this more protected cove we saw a flock of about twenty ring-necked ducks, four hooded mergansers, and three pied-billed grebes. Nearby were also some bufflehead and double-crested cormorants.

As we neared the end of the hike, we noticed it was getting lighter. As the sun was getting lower in the sky, it started to shine through a break in the clouds, changing the scene from the foggy one above to the bright one below:

The reflections in the water were really amazing: the near-perfect mirror image of the scenery was only disturbed the water droplets falling from the branches, creating a ripple effect across the surface. Once we got back to the car, the late afternoon light was especially stunning.

We got to our cabin just before sunset proper, and settled in for a nice evening including a spaghetti dinner, a fire in the wood stove, and a dip in the outdoor hot tub where the only sound you could hear was the gentle waves crashing on the nearby shoreline.

Despite a forecast for rain, I was thrilled when we woke up the next morning and the clouds started to clear shortly after sunrise. After going out for a nice breakfast, we made our way up Mt. Constitution, the highest point in the San Juan Islands at about 2,400 feet. There were still some clouds up there, and the summit was actually above the clouds, which again made for some interesting, ever-changing views.

Even up here the sun was starting to work its way through the clouds:

There wasn't a lot of bird activity up here. We heard a common raven, a flock of red crossbills flew by a couple of times, and we heard and saw several Pacific wrens. The wrens sure seem to be around in great numbers right now! They're one tiny forest dweller.

After our excursion to Mt. Constitution we decided to spend the rest of the day at the cabin. There were some hiking trails on the property there and a great view out the front windows into a secluded bay. Next up - some wildlife and scenic highlights from around the cabin!

A Macro Look at Turtleback Mountain

I had a fantastic birthday yesterday. The weather unexpectedly cooperated so we went over to Turtleback Mountain on Orcas Island to go for a hike. My boyfriend surprised me with a macro lens for my camera, so it was the perfect opportunity to play with my new toy!

Okay, okay, Turtleback Mountain has some pretty spectacular scenic views, so I'll share a few of those with you first before taking a close up look at some of the flora and fauna from the hike.

The view from 950' Ship's Peak

Here are some of my favorite macro shots from the day....

Grasshopper on a leaf

Pine needle close-up

Puffball mushroom

Sap dripping down a tree

Another grasshopper portrait

Tiny mushroom and moss sporophyte

The weather deteriorated while we were hiking and the wind really picked up which made birding difficult. We came across one woodland flock of chestnut-backed chickadees, golden-crowned kinglets, and brown creepers, and also saw lots of ravens cartwheeling in the wind off of Ship's Peak. I spotted several raptors, including a probable merlin, but they were all too far away or going too fast to be properly identified. So, no new year birds for the day!

After getting back to "our" island we went out for a tasty dinner and then enjoyed this special orca birthday cake!

Birds and Birthdays

I went out birding today with Jason and we saw a couple of cool things of note. One was a western meadowlark down near South Beach! Apparently, western meadowlarks used to be common breeders in the San Juan Islands until about 1960. It's unlear why they declined, because there seems to be some great grassland habitat for them here. They're no longer believed to breed here, and are pretty much just seen from September-April, although I've only ever seen one and it was last October. It's ironic that they're mostly a winter visitor to the islands now, because when I saw its bold yellow chest with distinct black V it made me think of spring!

The mew gulls at False Bay were up to their foot-paddling again, which is such a comical little dance to watch.

Down at the south end of the island is a pair of red-tailed hawks that we think probably have a nest down there since they're always in the same area, and a few weeks ago we observed them carrying grasses (nesting material?!). Today was the first day I really got a good look at both of them, and it turns out you can tell them apart because they are different color morphs. Red-tailed hawks come in all sorts of colors that were originally thought to be different species. At first I thought the dark one we were seeing was a Harlan's hawk (the darkest red-tailed hawk) but I forgot this morph actually has a black and white tail. Instead, we were looking at the relatively rare rufous morph, which makes up only about 10-20% of the red-tailed hawk population. Jason put digiscoping to the test and took a photo of the other "regular" red-tail with his digital camera through the scope we were borrowing. He'll post the cool shot he got on his blog.

I also wanted to remind you that this weekend, starting tomorrow, is the Great Backyard Bird Count! The purpose of the project is to get a snapshot of the birds across the US and Canada, and to give birders an excuse to spend at least 15 minutes a day monitoring what's in their yards. Some of us bloggers are participating in the (much much smaller) Great Bird Count of February just for fun, but its definitely worth taking a weekend to report what's in your yard for the Great Backyard Bird Count.

Finally, you should join me today in raising a toast to the 200th anniversary of the birth of two very great men. Amazingly enough, both Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on February 12th, 1809. They both changed the world in very different ways, but both for the better, in my not-so-humble opinion. I admire both these men, their genius, and their tenacity very much, and will be honor their legacy with a raised glass tonight.