A Whale and Bird Filled Weekend

Although the weather still won't quite commit to summer, the wildlife-watching has been fantastic on San Juan Island and is very much starting to reflect the changing seasons. The excitement for me this weekend started on Friday afternoon when the T101 group of transient orcas passed by Lime Kiln. While it's becoming more common to see transients from shore from San Juan, it's still not too common to see them this close off the west side!

Male transient orca T102 - born the same year as me!

The T101s are an impressive group because it's a female and her three adult sons. Often you'll only see one or maybe two males that stick together in one family unit. I hadn't personally seen these guys in 8 years, so it was neat to see them again!

T101A and T101B

J-Pod had been up north since they came through on Sunday May 7th, and it was very nice of them to wait until Saturday morning to come back south. It was also nice to get a break in the rainy morning weather to see them! They were very spread out both east-west and north-south across Haro Strait, so we only got good looks at about half of them from Lime Kiln, but we weren't complaining!

J16 Slick

The whales were "all mixed up" too, meaning they weren't in their family groups, so IDs were a little more challenging! The J16 family group was split up near the lead, in the middle, and at the end!

J36 Alki and her son J52 Sonic

We've had so much bird activity in the yard it's been possible to just hang out outside and turn up 20 species over the course of half an hour. One of the dramas that's been unfolding this spring is use of our nest boxes, including following a male house wren has he started building a nest alone, attracted a mate, and then defended his home from some violet-green swallows who were interested in taking over!

A male house wren begins to build a nest, persisting to place these seemingly too large twigs into the hole

The singing pays off! The male keeps close watch on a female as she adds softer materials to the nest he's started

Fight! The male wren defends the nest box against a pair of violet-green swallows that are interested in moving in

One reason I went outside Saturday evening was to check up on the wrens, as the nest box has seemed very quiet since the swallow incident, although we did see the wrens continuing to build up the nest later that day after the swallows had left. I'm hoping they've just gone more into stealth mode, perhaps as the female is incubating eggs, because we haven't noticed them entering or exiting the nest box in a few days, although we did hear the male signing yesterday.

While there wasn't much happening near the nest box (though I did observe a quiet chickadee enter to feed some begging chicks in the neighboring box), there were plenty of other birds to observe in the yard last night! Here are just a few of the things I saw:

Warbling vireo - new yard species and photo year bird #158

Bewick's wren singing his little heart out

Hairy woodpecker on the suet feeder

Rufous hummingbird on the lookout to defend "his" feeder

Yesterday afternoon J-Pod seemed indecisive about heading west, as we could still see them milling out near Discovery Island from Lime Kiln, but head west they finally did, so without any whales in the area this morning we again turned our attention to birds, and we found more than 35 species on a walk at Three Meadows Marsh. Included in the list were 4 more photo year birds, three of which I had been hearing in the last week or two but hadn't seen or had an opportunity to photograph.

Common yellowthroat - photo year bird #159

Yellow warbler - photo year bird #160

The other odd sight was this barn swallow that was trailing something behind it. At first I thought it was a plastic bag, but it seemed rather to be something fabric-like, with a string tied around the bird's tail or body. It seemed to be flying pretty well, though was laboring a bit more than the other birds. Hopefully it finds a way to free itself!

April Birds and Wildflowers

While the weather has been less than cooperative so far this month and the whales have been a bit too far from San Juan Island, we have taken advantage of some breaks in the rain and wind to enjoy the continuing spring arrivals and the first wildflowers of the season.

At Three Meadows Marsh we heard more birds than we were able to photograph (the marsh wren remains elusive, as does the Virginia rail which has always been the case - but so many friends have managed to photograph one this year that I've been hopeful!), but I did get a nicer shot of a yellow-rumped warbler.

Yellow-rumped warbler

I also was able to photograph my first tree swallow of the year. One cool aspect of the photo year list challenge is it gets me to attempt to take bird photos at times and of species I otherwise wouldn't even try. Swallows in flight? Yeah, right! But this year, this is my third swallow species I've photographed in flight, despite the challenges!

Tree swallow - photo year bird #137

 The other highlight was finding a pair of bushtits actively building a nest out of lichen! I've seen bushtit nests twice before, and all three times they've been built out of predominantly the same type of lichen. After staying still for a while, they were bold enough to continue working on the nest while we watched.

On the home front the feeders are more active than ever. I suspected the large winter flock of purple finches might have split up by now for the mating season, as the juncos seem to have done, but not so. They're still around in great numbers:

Meanwhile the woodpeckers are becoming more used our presence, leading to some fantastic photo opportunities!

Hairy woodpecker

Northern flicker

And every so often a new species turns out, like our first of the year American goldfinches a few days ago:

American goldfinch - photo year bird #138

Another surprise was a slate-colored junco! Considered part of the same dark-eyed junco species a our typical Oregon morph, the slate-colored is usually seen well east of here. Or perhaps it's a Cassiar morph? I didn't even know that was a thing until looking up the range of the slate-colored, and it's apparently somewhat of an intermediate between the slate-colored and Oregon morph, too subtle for me to really be able to tell where this one falls.

Yesterday I came across a birding hot spot at along an unlikely road near home. I pulled over to check out the swallows and ended up spending nearly an hour there and seeing/hearing more than 25 species, including killdeer, mew gulls, California quail, Canada geese, red-winged blackbirds, and three swallow species. I added a couple more to the year list, though my second attempt at photographing a northern rough-winged swallow this year failed again.

Savannah sparrow - photo year bird #139

Barn swallow - photo year bird #140

Today we headed out for a morning hike up Mt. Young. I thought it might be a bit too early for some of the common spring birds I find there, as well as for the wildflowers. Turns out I was wrong on both accounts! I was thrilled to hear the singing Cassin's vireos, Townsend's warblers, and Pacific-slope flycatchers, though less than thrilled with my attempts to photograph them among the dense foliage. The vireo and warbler are two species I don't think I've even photographed before, as they tend to stay deep in the branches or high in the treetops. Hopefully I'll have a chance to improve upon these shots later this season, which are both blurry.

Cassin's vireo - photo year bird #141

Townsend's warbler - photo year bird #142

I'm already surprisingly close to my goal of 150 species photographed this year, figuring I would probably be able to photograph about 75% of the birds I identified and going off my usual goal of 200 bird species a year. Right now I'm at 142 photographed out of 154 on my traditional year list, for a much better 92% thus far.

The flowers proved much easier to photograph, and many of my early favorites were in bloom!

Fawn lily, also appropriately named Easter lily

Calypso orchid, aka fairyslipper

A yellow monkey-flower species, always found on the same little hill each year

Shooting star on the Mt. Young summit

Kickin' Off the 2015 Year List

January 1st brought the beginning to another year list, and the New Year's Day tradition for birding for most of the daylight hours. Stepping out into the yard before breakfast, my first bird of the year was a common raven (1) followed shortly (and somewhat surprisingly) by a Pacific wren (2) and golden-crowned kinglet (3). The usual feeder species helped round out the list at 8 species before heading out to meet the rest of our family birding group.

Our first stop was Sportman's Lake, which turned up almost all of the expected waterfowl in a single stop! Some additional bonuses included a pair of bald eagles (19), a belted kingfisher (21), and a pied-billed grebe (24).

Next was a walk at Three Meadows Marsh - the moment documented by the one non-birder in our group, my mom :)

As you can see, it was frosty out, but we would definitely take the sunshine! The first year bird at the marsh was a surprising Lincoln's sparrow (25), one of the best species of the day. My pishing also turned up the hoped-for marsh wren (29), but we didn't have any success in getting a Virginia rail talk back, though Keith amazingly saw one!! But it's still a "miss" on my year list.

Next up, Jackson Beach turned out to be a fantastic stop for our first shorebirds and sea birds of the day including greater yellowlegs (33), common goldeneye (36), and another great find - a pair of long-tailed ducks (39). Along with a couple of the common grebes and loons, and a northern harrier (44) flyby, I was well on my way to my goal of 60 species on the day.

Cattle Point was next, where we spent almost an hour and a half. The first species when we got out of the car was another great one - peregrine falcon (45). We filled in the other expected seabirds by scanning with my dad's scope, including the hoped for but by no means expected marbled murrelet (50) and ancient murrelet (52), with decent flocks of both species!

I also had to pull my camera out for the first time of the year to photograph this pair of bald eagles, two of six we saw from Cattle Point!

Leaving Cattle Point I had 58 species on my list, and we went over to the Redoubt Road at American Camp. I was hoping for meadowlarks or a shrike, but there was hardly a bird in sight. There was yet another pair of bald eagles in the distance, and a small flock of golden-crowned sparrows (59), and that was it. 

On our way to False Bay I thought some birds we flushed off the side of the road didn't quite look like robins, and I'm glad we stopped, because they were varied thrushes (60)! That helped me reach my goal of 60, which I've managed to reach on January 1st each of the last four years.

These are likely my best-ever photos of a varied thrush, too, as they're usually skittish and/or hiding in the tree branches.

The light wasn't great at False Bay - there's no way we could have picked out a Eurasian wigeon among all the wigeon there, if there was one around. But we did still add northern pintail (61), dunlin (62), and western sandpiper (63). 

Dad scanning False Bay

The day still wasn't done, as a stop at the grocery store turned up the expected house sparrow (64), and then at home there was a downy woodpecker at the feeder just before dark (65). Not a bad total for the day!

Since the first, the weather has been gray, wet, and windy, and despite putting in a few more hours birding the only addition has been a ruby-crowned kinglet (66) in the yard. There's been several other great species reported on the island in the last few days, though, so as soon as it gets nicer you know I'll be out there looking! As of today, that puts Dave ahead of me at 73, but there's a loooong way to go yet!

A Six Warbler Kinda Day, and More

Last Tuesday afternoon, the last day of our very warm weather, I got out after work and walked around Three Meadows Marsh. In the back of my mind was still the chance to find the yellow-headed blackbird (which I didn't), but I also figured that in the bright sunshine there would be lots of bird species singing, and I wasn't disappointed. I took an hour and 45 minutes to walk around the marsh, pausing here and there to stand still and listen or sit in the sunshine and look. In that time, I turned up more than 40 species! The highlight was the wide variety of warblers - six species in all: orange-crowned, black-throated gray, Townsend's, Wilson's, common yellowthroat, and yellow (155).

Common yellowthroat

Orange-crowned warbler

After the six warblers, there were five swallows: northern-rough winged, violet-green, tree, cliff, and barn. Four finches: purple finch, pine siskin, red crossbill, and American goldfinch. Three sparrows: savannah, white-crowned, and song. Two wrens: marsh and house. And one heron for good measure: a great blue.

On Thursday after work we went for a walk at the Friday Harbor Labs, and it was a surprisingly birdy walk considering the dense woods there are often pretty quiet. More orange-crowned, black-throated gray, and Townsend's warblers were singing, as well as house wrens, brown creepers, and red-breasted nuthatches. I was surprised to find three woodpecker species: a couple of northern flickers, a pileated that came quite close where we stopped to sit on a mossy knoll, and a hairy woodpecker that was a new one for my county year list. We came back along the shore trail where the only sea bird present was a trio of rhinoceros auklets. While walking along this part of the trail we also heard a pair of barred owls (156) calling to each other - such an impressive call with their booming Who cooks for you, who cooks for you? Then back at the car I heard a single olive-sided flycatcher (157) call just before we left.

Today was gray and a bit drizzly, though still pretty warm at close to 60 degrees. I don't know if it was the rain that drove them in or what, but our feeders were extremely active all day after having been very quiet for weeks. Our sunflower seed feeder and bag of thistle seeds were bustling with pine sikins, red crossbills, and American goldfinches all day. I didn't want to scare them away (whenever a gull flew by, they flushed, then didn't come back for a while), so I just took this picture through our dirty glass door, but there's more than 15 birds of the three species here:

Occasionally we've had the pleasure of watching a mink come by. It runs down the rocks, dives into the water, then resurfaces a little bit later with a fish or shrimp or some other prize in its mouth. We've regularly seen it running down the shoreline with its food, making us wonder if it's carrying it back to a den. I wasn't able to get a photo of the mink today, but while trying I noticed there were numerous very large California sea cucumbers around - much bigger and more abundant than usual for right here!

During a break in the weather (and a break in the playoff hockey that also took up a lot of the weekend), I headed out to go for a walk at the quarry at the Limekiln Preserve. There were a few target year birds I was hoping for, and one of them, a black-headed grosbeak (158) showed itself briefly on a fence post on my drive there. Westside Lake was pretty quiet when it came to ducks (just a pair of mallards), but there were lots of birds singing including a mourning dove and a pair of warbling vireos. As I walked the loop by the quarry, I also heard a Cassin's vireo, Pacific-slope flycatchers, and the regular assortment of warblers, sparrows, and finches that have been abundant of late. I saw both Anna's and rufous hummingbirds and a few violet-green swallows swooping over the cliffs. No luck with turning up any other year birds on this walk, but I did find a stunning cinnabar moth:

The manroot was also abundant on the cliffs and seems to be in peak bloom:

Looks like we're tied with Dave at last count as we both sit at 158 - amazing how close our tallies stay throughout the year! And while I'm a good 30 species up on my dad on the year list challenge at the moment, he's got me worried because he's about to embark on an epic two-week, cross-Canada trip that will include some visits to a few birding hotspots. I'll enjoy his bird sightings vicariously while keeping watch for some more new species for me here on the west coast.

From Winter to Summer

This month - this season - is a true merge between winter and summer. Some mornings there has been a coating of frost on the ground, but some afternoons have been warm enough to walk outside with no more layers than a T-shirt. There are still bufflehead and ring-necked ducks at Westside Lake, but above them orange-crowned warblers sing and rufous hummingbirds display. Some days have been windy, rainy, and downright chilly, while others have been bright and sunny and bordering on warm. Needless to say, I've been fully enjoying those nicer days and spending more and more time outside.

Sometimes we get all kinds of weather in a single day or over the course of just a few hours. On one such afternoon, the result was a rainbow (actually a faint double rainbow!) over Brown Island seen right off our front porch:

I've been doing some bird monitoring out at False Bay Creek, and back on April 5th I heard my first common yellowthroat (130) of the season singing a single tentative song. By now, they are confidently trilling away in all the marshy areas on the island.

Last Sunday I went for a walk with four friends at Three Meadows Marsh, which is probably experiencing its most active month bird-wise right now. There were pairs of bufflehead, northern shoveler, mallards, pied-billed grebes, coot, ring-necked ducks, and wood ducks on the marsh. The most impressive sighting was FIVE swallow species, a first for me in the month of April. The tree and violet-green swallows were as expected the most common, but there were also a few more barn swallows, a single cliff swallow (132), and a pair of northern rough-winged swallows (133). There were probably a good 20 marsh wrens singing around the marsh, along with more yellowthroat. In total, two hours turned up a very impressive 40 species.

Today I took advantage of a half-day at work to spend the afternoon outside, but before leaving the work place I added orange-crowned warbler (134) to my year list. I'm surprised this one has taken so long to check off. I'm pretty sure I've glimpsed and faintly heard a few before today, but I just wasn't sure enough until now! That sighting, however, helped push our work bird list past 30 species this year, which is way more than I would have expected!

After lunch I headed out to the upland trails near the Lime Kiln Quarry. I was surprised to hear my first warbling vireo (135) of the year - a bit early for this species, but I checked the song on my bird app and it was unmistakable. A little further down the trail I heard a singing Hutton's vireo (136), another year bird!

There have been lots of mourning cloak (Nymphalis antiopa) butterflies out in the last few weeks, and today I finally got close enough to one to get a photo:

The quarry overlook was beautiful this afternoon. While taking in the view I could see or hear violet-green swallows, American robins, orange-crowned warblers, purple finches, chestnut-backed chickadees, and red-breasted nuthatches. 

I had seen a couple of rufous hummingbirds, but was surprised when a male Anna's hummingbird perched nearby. The Anna's are here year-round, but seem to fade into the background a bit during the few months after the flashy and aggressive rufous hummers arrive. 

Next up, a trip to the Oregon Coast! Hopefully the weather will cooperate, as then there will be more pictures to share and some more birds for the year list!

Enjoying the Spring Weather

The weekend continued with the awesome weather - sunny, blue skies, and close to 60 degrees. I took full advantage by spending a lot of time outside, both going on walks and birding and just sitting in and soaking up the sun.

A walk around Three Meadows Marsh was especially pleasant, with singing marsh wrens and red-winged blackbirds around every corner. Right when reaching the marsh I also heard a Virginia rail.

I also heard a pileated woodpecker (128), saw a pair of wood ducks (129), and spotted an early barn swallow (130) in and among the violet-green and tree swallows. It wasn't just bird life, either. I also saw three Pacific tree frogs and a garter snake.

A visit to Land Bank's Westside Preserve was more about sitting in the sun and reading, but I couldn't keep myself from picking up the camera when I spotted some wildflowers in bloom. The first one I saw was satin flower, also known as grass widows (Olsynium douglasii):

And one of my favorites, shooting star (Dodecatheon sp.):

It was a little tough to be inside at work on Monday as the nice weather persisted. I left a little early and headed straight to Land Bank again to decompress from the day, which was a great decision:

Here we are on Tuesday and it's apparent the weather is changing back to being a little grayer, cooler, and wetter again. The great bird sightings are coming in left and right, however, so I'm sure there will be some more good sightings in the near future!