A Warbler, An Owl, and A Starling

Last week I got the chance to take another walk at Three Meadows Marsh, and it's amazing how much the bird life had changed in the few weeks since I was there last. This time, there wasn't a single duck, goose, or grebe in site on the lake. Most of the birds identified were heard rather than seen, with the highlight for me being my first yellow warblers (180) of the year. Other warblers heard were Wilson's, Townsend's, and common yellowthroat. There were cliff, barn, and violet-green swallows about, and both Pacific-slope and olive-sided flycatchers could be heard, as well. A resident of the area also pointed us in the direction of a Cassin's vireo nest in a madrone tree, and we were lucky enough to find it and see the bird on the nest! Unfortunately it was too high up to get a picture.

I also got to check on the barred owls with Katie again last week, and when we first got there we couldn't believe our eyes that the nest hole was empty! The owlets seemed to way too young to have fledged already, but where were they? It took me a moment to spot this one sitting ON TOP of the nest hole:

We did a little bit of research later, and found out that it's common for barred owl chicks to leave the nest and start crawling around a week or two before they actually start flying. These young owls are called "branchers" because they climb around on branches using their beaks and feet. I can't imagine how this guy was able to climb from the hole up to where he was sitting here, but I guess they can even climb up trees if they fall out of them. I hope the other two chicks weren't too far away, but we didn't see them!

Another impressive bird sighting I had this week was actually of a starling. At the end of my street there's a starling who perches in the same tree and sings, and while I know starlings are mimics, this is the most incredible mimicry I've heard. One day he imitated an olive-sided flycatcher, red-tailed hawk, and greater yellowlegs one right after the other. On other days I've also heard his American robin and killdeer impressions. I didn't have the right lens on the camera to get a closer photo of him, but I thought he deserved to have his picture shown, because I'm impressed:

Part 2: The Sequim Coastline

After visiting Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge, I wanted to visit several other places along the shoreline near Sequim that I had read about. The first couple of stops were along Dungeness Bay. One of the neatest places was Oyster House Road, which provides the closest view of the protected Graveyard Spit that juts off of Dungeness Spit. The parking lot at the end of this road also gives you a chance to scan Dungeness Bay and its associated mudflats. When we pulled up, I was delighted to see a flock of shorebirds not too far away. There were over a hundred dunlin, and mixed in were about twenty black-bellied plovers (133). I was excited because, along with the brant, this was one of the two species that I really thought I had a good chance to see while in Sequim.

Above Oyster House Road we spotted a bald eagle perched on a snag. Nearby was a tree full of bustling European starlings, but one starling was perched right below the eagle, singing his heart out. Maybe they're too small for eagles to bother with? I still think he was pretty brave. It was quite a sight!

Many of the rural roads also had productive birding, with lots of ponds filled with a variety of ducks. Along Jamestown Road we found a nice mix of non-aquatic species. While there were no raptors perched in the "Jamestown snags", we saw our only Steller's jays of the day and a mix of House sparrows and golden-crowned sparrows. In an orchard were a flock of California quail (134), my first of the year. A little further on in the same field was another flock, this time of eight Eurasian-collared doves. I don't think I've ever seen more than two at a time before.

Marilyn Nelson County Park was one of the biggest highlights of the afternoon. This park is situated near the mouth of Sequim Bay and you can walk down the rocky beach of the half-mile Travis Spit. From there you also get a view of Protection Island, a national wildlife refuge in the Strait of Juan de Fuca that is one of the most productive breeding seabird colonies in the state. I've read about it so much that it was nice to finally see it, even from two miles away!

There was surprisingly little activity out on the water, but I realized shortly that was because all the birds were right along the shoreline! This female bufflehead was one of the few diving ducks present:

Up one direction of the beach I spotted an immature bald eagle feeding on something. At first I thought it was a dead harbor seal, but upon closer inspection I realized it was actually what looked like a deer carcass. The deer are known to swim across some of the channels in the region...maybe this one drowned and washed up? I didn't want to get too close to examine it more carefully, since it was pretty clear it "belonged" to this eagle:

Along Travis Spit were about a hundred brant right along the beach. After seeing them only way in the distance from Dungeness Spit, it was nice to get a closer look. They were actively feeding on eelgrass, their primary food source, in the shallows. These are the typical black brant of the west coast. The brant on the Atlantic are gray, and were formerly considered a separate species.

After stopping a couple more places along Sequim Bay, we headed over to the Dungeness River Audubon Center which has a trail over a railroad bridge and through the woods. The feeders near the visitor center were very active. We saw both black-capped and chestnut-backed chickadees, red-breasted nuthatches, and more golden-crowned sparrows. There was also a pair of Anna's hummingbirds taking advantage of the hummingbird feeders. You can only barely make it out on this lower resolution version of the photo, but she's actually sticking her tongue out a little bit:

By this time we had been birding for 7 hours straight and I was famished. The trail mix and bananas we had been subsiding on all day weren't quite enough to keep me going, so we headed back to Sequim for an early dinner. After having some great Mexican food at Las Palomas (an appropriate restaurant for the day - la paloma is Spanish for dove), it was still light out so we headed out for one more short excursion back to walk on the trails we didn't have time for at Dungeness Recreation Area in the morning. I wondered if we would be able to add two more species to the day list? 

The best part of this trip actually turned out to be on the drive there, when we pulled off on a side road to where a huge flock of several hundred wigeon had just landed. The pond was very active, and within the American wigeon I found two male Eurasian wigeons - a new species for the day list. There were also a pair of Canada geese, a small flock of ring-necked ducks, and along the edges a pair of pied-billed grebes - another day list species! 

The grebe turned out to be the last new species for the day, and when I tallied it up at night back at the hotel, we reached a nice even 60 species for the day. Not bad at all, and definitely better than the 39 species recorded the day before. It was an awesome day - one of those real breaks from everything else that goes on in life, and a chance to just explore a new area and look at birds. Can't complain one bit.