Oregon Trip: Happy Camp

With my dad retiring from his job this month, it was time to take a trip to Oregon to help celebrate. First stop was at my parents' house in St. Helens, where a skunk visited us on the first night. It's a blurry picture because I didn't want to use flash and scare it, but it's amazing how close we got - pretty much face to face! Skunks are amazingly beautiful animals up close, but a bit oddly shaped: narrow and small up front, and higher and wider in the hind quarters.

My parents' feeders remain very active, with pine siskins, chickadees, juncos, Steller's jays, flickers, nuthatches, squirrels, and rufous hummingbirds:

Next up it was time to head to Happy Camp Beach in Netarts on the Oregon Coast for a long weekend's worth of celebrations with family and close friends. We rented a cabin with space for 12 people overlooking Netarts Bay. During low tides you could see up to 30 harbor seals hauled out on the sand spit, and also visible were common loons, surf scoters, red-breasted mergansers, western gulls, and sometimes large flock of brant (137).

On Saturday two of us hiked the Cape Lookout trail, which winds mostly through the woods but also offers stunning coastal views in places to both the north and the south:

There were probably a dozen or more wildflower species in bloom, including two types of violet, candyflower, twinflower, a paintbrush species, salmonberry, wild ginger and:

Western trillium (Trillium ovatum)

Fairybell species? (Disporum sp.)

Oregon oxalis or wood sorrel (Oxalis oregana)

While we had a bit of everything weather-wise over the course of the weekend, it was warm, clear, and sunny when we got to the end of Cape Lookout.

There was a lot of bird activity, including a raft of 500 or so common murres and one or two hundred Pacific loons, all flying from south to north. A pair of Caspian terns (138) flew by, as did a pair of ravens, and we could hear orange-crowned and Townsends warblers (139) singing. There relative calm was broken up by a cackling commotion that turned out to be a pair of peregrine falcons. It was pretty awesome from such a high vantage point to look down on them from above:

When other people at the lookout left, we were quiet enough that a ground squirrel was bold enough to come out and grab a few flower buds:

We spent about half an hour out there enjoying the sights and sounds and scanning for whales. It's past the peak of the gray whale migration, but it shouldn't be over entirely and Oregon has a small coastal resident population in the summer. I was disappointed not to see any, but I figured it wasn't to be, so we started back up the trail. I stopped at another small overlook and was just framing a picture when I heard the distinct kawoof of a whale taking a breath. There was my gray whale for the day, and it was pretty close! We saw it surface four times before diving. We walked back out to the end thinking we would see it again rounding the point, but it wasn't to be, so I was thankful we saw it at all.

The weather was supposed to be even nicer on Sunday, but instead it was drizzly all day. That didn't stop a group of us from helping my dad with a COASST survey, and unlike on my always empty San Juan Island beach, we found (parts of) five stranded sea birds: one glaucous-winged gull, three western gulls, and the wing of an alcid of some kind. I was also surprised when someone found some mushrooms growing right out of the sand near the grassy high beach. I've never seen that before! I wonder if there was wood or some other organic matter buried beneath?

Another surprise sighting was a brief look at a white-tailed kite (140) cruising the cliffs above!

After lunch a few of us headed over to Cape Meares, one of my favorite state parks along the Oregon Coast. Last time I was there the Cape Meares Lighthouse had just been vandalized and was closed, but it was open again (though with some bullet holes remaining in some of the irreplaceable glass panes) and we got to take a tour to the top.

There were more Caspian terns, common murres, and pelagic cormorants to be seen, and we also found one red-necked grebe. My dad added a whopping seven year birds here since he was still missing a lot of the common oceanic species, but I just added one that I was surprised wasn't on my list already: hairy woodpecker (141).

Inshore of the lighthouse we also took the short trail to see the Octopus Tree, a large Sitka spruce with eight living trunks that is an Oregon Heritage Tree:

The weather was beautiful again on Monday, but after a morning walk on the beach it was time to head back to Portland. We stopped on the way off a tip from a friend at the Tillamook Forest Center, where we found an American dipper (142) right under the suspension bridge just as described.

My parents had somewhere to be in the afternoon, so we spent a lazy couple of hours reading outside in the warm sunshine and enjoying the local wildlife. In addition to all the species I saw when we arrived, there were also mourning doves and band-tailed pigeons, and a single yellow-rumped warbler:

My parents' little pond was also bustling with micro flora and fauna. It's kind of hard to tell in the picture, but this is one of two clumps of frog eggs that I saw, with tadpoles well on their way developing:

In addition to all the great nature sightings, we had a great long weekend filled with fun games, good food, and great company. Thanks to everyone who came, and congrats Dad on your retirement!!!

August Adventures: Outer Islands, Pond Sleuthing, Sunrises, and More

As much as we complain about our summer weather (or lack thereof) here in the San Juan Islands, we've really had a pretty summery August with lots of sunshine and warm days - at times even bordering on hot. In the last post I updated on a great extended weekend of orca sightings, but here are some of the other things I've been looking at this month...

On August 4th, my work sponsored a party aboard a local barge, complete with live music, catered food, and sand on the ground of the boat. We made a stop at Stuart Island, one of the outer islands I've long wanted to visit. While some people swam in the harbor, others of us took advantage of the short time at anchor to hike out to the Turn Point Light Station at the northwest end of the island. We had to hoof it to make it there and back, but it was worth it to visit a spot I've long seen from the water but never set foot on from the land side.

Here's a view of it from the water - taken today actually!

I imagine it would be a great spot to view the whales from shore; living up to its name, the whales often make a sharp turn there to go from Haro Strait to Boundary Pass, passing close to shore. There weren't any whales when we there, which was probably a good thing because I would have missed the boat back to watch them, but I'll definitely have to go back sometime to spend some more time there and try to see whales. It was still a pretty spectacular view that late afternoon, though.

I've been spending some early mornings on the west side of the island hoping to get one of those quiet, glassy water whale passbys. That hasn't happened yet, but I've seen some other cool stuff. One morning, this fledgling bald eagle chick flew up and landed - right in the top of a little madrone tree. It was kind of an awkward perch for an eagle, but he tested his wings a bit before taking flight again:

Yesterday morning when I was getting ready to head out, I paused to take in the sunrise from right here at our marina. It was pretty spectacular to see it coming up right over the side of Mt. Baker:

The activity at the bird feeders here on the houseboat seems to have really slowed down, though I did see my first chestnut-backed chickadees at the feeders in what seems like months. This wasn't a feeder visitor, but one afternoon a great blue heron perched right on the walkway railing just off our front porch:

On a warm Sunday afternoon I spent some time walking around a pond on a friend's property. Lots of insects were enjoying the sunny day, including these dragonflies:

Eight-spotted skimmer (Libellula forensis)

Cardinal meadowhawk (Sympetrum illotum)

There were also lots of damselflies, and this single butterfly was a beauty:

Hoary comma (Polygonia gracilis)

The the abundance of bullfrogs were interesting to look at, but unfortunately are having what I'm sure is a pretty negative effect on some of the other local wildlife. Native to the eastern US, they are an invasive species here in the west, where they eat anything smaller than themselves including the tadpoles of most native frog species.

Today, despite a lack of orca reports, we went out on the Western Prince, the boat I used to work on. We didn't see any cetaceans, but there were tons of bald eagles all over the place. We easily saw more than 20 throughout the course of the morning. 

The most interesting was an adult feeding on what looked like a dead harbor seal pup on the north side of Spieden Island. Right above it on the rocks were one of the several small herds of Mouflon sheep we saw right along the beach. I know the sheep like to lick the salt of the intertidal level, but several were actually trailing pieces of seaweed from their mouths while they were walking! The eagle's kidn of hard to see, but it's in the middle of the bottom of the picture - you can just make out the gray lump its sitting on:

We saw some of the other Spieden Island "native" wildlife, including these male European fallow deer:

We saw tons of harbor seals hauled out everywhere, too, since it was a pretty low tide. There wasn't a lot in the way of sea birds, though I did spot two kinds of gulls, a pair of marbled murrelets, black oystercatchers, pigeon guillemots, rhinoceros auklets, and pelagic cormorants. It was neat to see the cormorants had returned to a former nesting site of theirs right by Turn Point on Stuart Island. Those little ledges sure don't look like they offer much in the way of nesting space to me, but to each his own!

As you can see here, they don't form huge nesting colonies like some other sea birds, but do aggregate in small groups. They roam around from year to year, too, which perhaps explains why this site has been empty for several years prior to this one.

There - I think that catches me up a bit on sharing pictures from this month! There are more adventures in store, and I'm hoping more whales and nice weather too, so I'll try to get back to posting in a more timely manner.

Ridgefield NWR - May 2012

On Sunday afternoon my parents and I spent over four hours at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge, one of my all-time favorite places to bird watch and a site I try to visit whenever I'm in the area. My dad and I comment how when you make a repeat visit to a location where you saw an uncommon bird, you always find yourself looking for that same species in the exact same spot. That's why we stopped before the bridge into the auto-tour loop to look around the trees where several years ago we found an oriole nest. We found a nest in the same tree, though it looked like the tattered remains of an old one made up primarily of blue fishing line. While looking around, we heard a loud call and then spotted a Bullock's oriole (190). Nice! Sometimes it pays off to take a closer look in those locations.

Along the first part of the drive we saw all the expected species: lots of waterfowl, including another family of pied-billed grebes. While we didn't see the numbers of ducks we do in the winter, a huge variety of species was still present, with small numbers of eleven duck species seen, including about 20 cinnamon teal, a few redhead, and a single male blue-winged teal (191).

Male gadwall

 We also saw some yellow-headed blackbirds and heard the first of many, many common yellowthroat and marsh wrens for the day. The new purple martin boxes seemed to be fulfilling their purpose, too - we saw one purple martin there, a new species for me at the refuge.

At the bird blind I found a white-breasted nuthatch (192), but the best photo op was of this little Pacific tree frog:

In the middle of the auto tour route is the one mile Kiwa Trail loop, which we hiked. It takes you out through a marsh habitat where this time of year you can hear lots of American bitterns, soras, and Virginia rails. On our walk we also heard several winnowing Wilson's snipes. The other main bird species present here were yellow warblers, tree swallows, and lots and lots of cedar waxwings:

Back in the car, we were able to find an adult great horned owl but not any of the chicks that were supposedly out of the nest nearby. The next reason to come to a stop was for this yellow-headed blackbird perched close to the road. Turns out he was also perched close to a red-winged blackbird nest, and the pair tending the nest were not happy about that, with the male red-winged blackbird keeping a close eye on him and flying directly at him if he made too many moves.

That didn't seem to be enough to deter the yellow-headed blackbird, however. This, for some reason, was definitely the place he wanted to be singing, if that's what you can call the interesting noises they make:

This was a popular stretch for singing birds. Here's one marsh wren belting his little heart out nearby:

Down the final stretch of the auto-tour loop is another one of those places where we always talk about how we saw black terns there once. With the species having been sighted there the day before, we took extra care to look for them again. I spotted something that very well could have been terns extremely high in the air, but as we positioned ourselves to get a better look they seemingly disappeared and we could not relocate them. Two other flying birds did catch my eye, however - at first I thought they were hawks, but the flight didn't seem quite right. Turns out they were bitterns! I've seen bitterns fly occasionally, but never so high in the air! It was quite a way to see these usually secretive birds. The one on the left was calling, and his mouth is open in this picture:

We were just pulling out of the refuge when one last bird caught my eye - a woodpecker that landed on a telephone pole. I only got a quick look, but enough to see it was a red-breasted sapsucker (193), my fourth year bird of the day. In total, we saw and heard 54 species at Ridgefield - not bad at all!

Getting to Know Third Lagoon

The San Juan Island Trails Committee has been hosting a series of Know Your Island walks where naturalists, historians, and others share information with locals during a guided hike at one of our island's numerous recreational areas. Last Saturday I went along on the hike exploring Third Lagoon to share information about birds. Third Lagoon is probably one of the least visited trails on the island, despite being a beautiful access to both deep forest and the shoreline of Griffin Bay. I was surprised how many islanders I told about the hike said, "Where is that?"

It was a rainy Saturday, but we still had 20 people show up for our hike. In addition to birds, others talked about trees, lichens, and mushrooms. I definitely learned a thing or two!

Shaggy mane mushrooms

My friend Kari knows quite a lot about mushrooms, and had a sharp eye for finding them too! She collected a whole basket of chanterelles - all of which I probably would have walked by without seeing.

Kari with a chanterelle

There is an amazing variety of trees at this part of the island, and we saw a couple of species I'm not that familiar with that I didn't know we had here - quaking aspen and Douglas maple.

Douglas maple (Acer glabrum)

Our two youngest participants got particularly excited over this tiny tree frog found among the detritus. I thought it was pretty cool, too.

The rain held off for the first part of our hike, but it started an earnest as we headed out into the open near the lagoon itself, which was where the best birding was. As a result I don't have any pictures of that part, but we saw lots of harlequin ducks, red-breasted mergansers, and horned grebes, along with a couple of black oystercatchers, common loons, and a great blue heron.

It was supposed to stay rainy all weekend, but Sunday turned out to be a gorgeous (if chilly) day. I went back to the south end of the island again, and had to pull over when I noticed these California poppies in full bloom - at the end of October! This looks more like the type of photo I would take in July:

One final sighting to share is that last week we heard and then saw two barred owls right from the deck of our houseboat! I couldn't believe it. Their call is accurately described as "Who cooks for you?" but that doesn't really capture the booming quality when you hear it, especially in the middle of a cold night. Get a feel for it by listening to the audio recording from Bird Web here. It sounds so cool.

South End Wildlife: Foxes, Birds, and a Frog

I've been so busy with a couple of other projects that I've gotten a little bit behind reporting some of my recent wildlife sightings! A little over a week ago I went back to check on the four fox kits and found them rough-housing with each other. Here are some photo highlights:

Prints of this photo available here

Prints of this photo available here

Prints of this photo available here

Prints of this photo available here

Again I got to see the mother fox bring food to the kits. This time the baby black fox with the injured ear made off with what looked like a large rat:

You can see more photos of these fox kits on my previous blog posts here and here. 

This afternoon warmed up nicely so I went down for a walk at South Beach. I was hoping to find some migrating pipits, but no such luck. There were lots of savannah sparrows and American goldfinches as well as a yellow warbler, several common yellowthroat, a few house finches, and some red-winged blackbirds and brown-headed cowbirds. The only seabirds in sight on the flat calm waters were about ten Pacific loons:

As I was climbing over the driftwood, something green caught my eye. I was surprised to find a Pacific tree frog right there on the beach! I associate them with wetlands and wooded areas, not coastline. I wonder what it was doing there?