January 27th - South Kitsap Day Trip

Day Trip!

This is the weather I chose
for a day trip. :)?

I like the idea that trips to Kitsap, especially the South end, can make for a quick trip. My daughter had a full Saturday with Senior year activities, so I dropped her off and went right for the ferry. . . 

Just to find out that it had just left, and the next one would be coming in two or three hours. 

So, I'd been talking to a friend about this. I honestly have a pie-in-the-sky view that sometimes the ferries will be the best choice. Her contention. . . is that they cost more and will only in rare circumstances get you across the sound faster than driving around (once you factor in the wait at the terminal). Today, for a trip from South King to South Kitsap, I decided to make it a drive. 

Down I-5, over the Tacoma Narrows (beautiful bridge), and up to Kitsap. 

Long Lake

This was the first, and not the last time during the day where I thought, "I don't need boots for this!", when I probably needed a kayak. There were two Mallards. . . swimming in the field. Red flag, but I guess I thought maybe there were some high spots? dry spots? No. But I tried to find those spots, splooshing across the field one step at a time. 

For a couple of Pied-billed Grebes, and a couple of Lesser Scaup. :D So. . . this was almost entirely just an opportunity to get my feet wet for funsies. Some Red-winged Blackbirds, however, were new birds on the year list. 48 and counting! This is a species I'll see plenty of this year, but it was still nice to get a tick!

The goal for the year, 150 birds, is something I'm trying to hit as efficiently as I can. I'm trying to also bring the life list up to 175. I'd started the year with 117 species on the life list. After my trip earlier in the month, and then this Red-winged Blackbird, my total was now up to . . . 117! It will be interesting to get more and more of the common birds off of the year list, but I definitely wanted to use this day to get a few good lifers added as well. 

Port Orchard

I nearly typed "Port Gamble". So many Ports this year. I didn't make a beeline for Port Orchard, but first made a stop at Yukon Harbor. 

What a neat stop! One of my biggest dissatisfactions with birding in Kitsap County has always been how hard it is to find access to water views. But here, I found plenty of easy birding. 

The sprinkles had lightened a little bit, so I was able to stand on the edge of the beach and scan through 600 American Wigeon, hoping for a Eurasian Wigeon. 600 was actually a pretty good count! I am of a belief that this is one of the ways to find the interesting birds hiding in the large groups - just count them all!

No shortage of American Wigeons!

None were hiding in there, but I did have a Pacific Wren (49) calling from a nearby yard. As I listened to the whistling wigeons, I heard a high-pitched rattle of shorebirds - Black Turnstones! (50)

Black Turnstones

I'd seen some of these in Jefferson, but not Kitsap, in January. In the distance, I had a good few birds to sort through. Plenty of Surf Scoters, and a lot of Short-billed Gulls. I always snap pictures of large groups of distant birds, and in this case found a single bird that was new for the year, Bonaparte's Gull (51). Yaknow. . .  it's early in the year. I need to set the bar as low as possible, in terms of picture quality in this blog. It ain't much! But this little dude with the black splotch behind the eye is a pretty common bird. Not likely to be the last I see this year. 

Hey look! Another Short-billed Gull.

The best way to get to know any town. . . 

is definitely not to just drop oneself down in a Starbucks. But hey. . . they've got one in Port Orchard! I did plan on getting some work done during the day, needed to dry out a little bit, and also. . . wanted to see if there were any breadcrumbs to follow on eBird. There were two seats with outlet access, and neither dropped me near a person. I learned nothing about Port Orchard at this stop. But I dried out just fine and came out of it with some good ideas. 

Not open today, but you can get across the inlet this way. Foot traffic only.

The Port Orchard waterfront was the second time that I was pleasantly surprised with the water views. I just parked it at the Park and Bird lot (90 percent sure on the name of it) and walked the dock for the Port Orchard-Bremerton (seasonal) passenger ferry. So many Olympic Gulls - the uncountable hybrid birds with some mix of Glaucous-winged and Western Gulls. So many Short-billed Gulls. That has been 3000 percent of the gulls I've seen this year, the Bonaparte's Gull notwithstanding. 

There's a nice paved trail that runs along the waterfront, so I continued along. There were more Surf Scoters, more Common and Barrow's Goldeneyes, and finally a new duck for the year, White-winged Scoter (52). 

One bird that I had half-expected here was California Scrub-Jay (53). There had been reports from eBird, but not quite as many as Bremerton and Hansville seemed to have. But I was not surprised when I heard one calling from the hillsides above the water. These birds would have been completely unexpected a dozen years ago, but they've moved in. Binoculars kept getting misty, but I kept turning corners and finding new flocks of gulls and rafts of ducks to hunt through. Finally, I caught a single gull that was light enough on the mantle and primaries to call a Glaucous-winged Gull (54), and another sitting on the water that was dark enough in the mantle and primaries (and clean enough on the head) to call a Western Gull (55). There'd been enough almost-pure ones along the way that were just a little off

. I also had a chance to scope out the businesses along the waterfront. It looked like there might be a few different possible places to sit down, plug in, have a meal and a pint and do some work to end the day. 

Gorst 2.0

After my explorations at the Port Orchard waterfront, I drove to a place I've been to quite a few times over the years, but I'd had a chance to talk about birding from Gorst with some Kitsap birders a few weeks back. 

"There's a spot behind the Subaru dealer."

"Is that before or after the bikini barista place?"

"Which one. . .?"

"Oh. . . um. I guess there's the first pull off. . . "

"Oh yeah, the spot where we walk over used needles. Past that. And you go into the Subaru dealer lot. It's going to look like you're not supposed to be there. . ."

100 percent accurate description of the path to this neat little spot. A parking area that can only be accessed by going through the unsigned Subaru lot, leading to a great view of the terminus of Sinclair Inlet. This was a game-changing bit of help. From the parking, there's a path that takes one down closer to the water. For the second time today, I thought "I don't need the boots" in a situation where I may have appreciated the boots. 

Song Sparrows called from the brambles near the lot. Bald Eagles were perched in the trees above, as well as a Great Blue Heron (with 5-10 more flushing by the end of my visit). Similarly, I quickly found a Greater Yellowlegs (56), not far from me, but later found a dozen or more on the far side. 

Northern Flicker (57) was another new bird for the year - one of many "easy" birds that I'll be adding early in the year. Scanning the water, I came up with Common Mergansers, Buffleheads, and Surf Scoters. Continuing to follow the line of Greater Yellowlegs out along the far side, I landed on a couple dozen Dunlin (58) as well. Killdeer added another shorebird to the stop, and as I was starting to leave, a Wilson's Snipe (59) flushed and wheeled around to land farther up the shore. 

Bremerton

I had a few birds to try for in Bremerton, including several at Lions Park. So, I continued around the corner. I found myself much more able to drive past the birds I could see from my car, armed with a better idea of how to get to the water to see some. And Bremerton is not a place where I've really done any exploring. I got into town and thought of taking a look at birds from the ferry terminal. I misread a sign at some point, and realized I was in the ferry line. I started to take a U-turn, and I realized I would be doing so into oncoming traffic. It took a second or two to navigate, but I found the way out. That will be a puzzle to figure out another day!

Getting to Lions Park was easy enough, and it was raining. So hard. I found a parking spot away from the lake, and started scanning the flock of gulls on the lawns. Mostly more of the same - so many Short-billed Gulls, and so many Olympic Gulls. But one Ring-billed Gull (60) slipped past security. 

I saw a big pile of American Wigeons out on the far end of the walk, so I tried to get a closer view. Yellow-rumped Warblers, and Golden-crowned Kinglets (61) stuck it out in the rain, calling from the trees above. In amongst the wigeons, I actually found two Eurasian Wigeons (62), working hard not to get too close to them. Wigeon just seem to make a run for it at a shorter distance. I could see from here that, if I chose to walk across the soggy field, I could look down at the Port Washington Narrows (the water leading into Dyes Inlet) and scan through more birds in the rain. Nope! In retrospect, I think I missed out on a good chance for Harlequin Ducks. But it was time to get dry, get fed, and get some work done!

Whiskey Gulch, Port Orchard

This was a nice place to finish the day! I landed here during happy hour, so my beer and my wings were both discounted, letting me get work done in a nice quiet corner pretty inexpensively. The final tally of 62 was a much better place to end January, especially with four code 3 birds on the list, including three new birds for the life list (Western Gull, Wilson's Snipe, California Scrub-Jay). I'm already looking over how to make it to Jefferson County in February! By which I mean, how to pass through Kitsap and pick up some birds efficiently. 

And, in keeping with the theme for the year, I came out of this (weather aside), with a new and improved perspective on some of the birding spots and some of the towns in Kitsap. Yeah. . . there's a lot of water, and there's a lot of homes on the water. There's some sketchy places, as you might find in any town in any part of the state. But that's not the whole story for Kitsap County. I think this is true of any place (and, far more importantly, of any person). Neither perfect