July 26th - Spotties to Shorebirds

Somewhere, Jefferson County

Breakfast time

I'd fallen asleep to Spotted Owls, and I woke up to them as well. Around 4:30 A.M., I got a few more calls. I peeled the tent "door" back and looked out at the gibbous moon. Get back to sleep? I considered it, but to be fair, I had (number redacted) miles to get back to my car, and (number redacted) miles to drive to get back to civilization. And more shorebirds were waiting for me. I knew it. 

So, I did get up, enjoyed the brisk air (stars were out now), and eventually heard the start of the morning chorus - Olive-sided Flycatcher, American Robin, Varied Thrush (yay!), and Western Tanager were the prominent members of the chorus.

I did the slowest possible packing. In part to enjoy the sights and sounds. In part because walking back to my car in light sounded just peachy. I also wanted to do a better packing job than I'd done on the way up. So packing, breakfast (interesting... I brought no bowl for my oatmeal...), and I started back to the car. Very early on, I heard this: 

THIS has been a hoot. I originally had this as an American Goshawk. And that's a pretty exciting bird to find in Jefferson County. It's a code 4 bird, and not at all a bad fit for the pristine habitat I was in. I could think of no real confusion species and had really stepped through all of the birds I could imagine in this habitat. None had calls like this. For comparison, listen to call 3 here on Cornell's site.

Then I saw a post on Facebook in an Olympic National Park group - a picture of a bird on the ground on a remote trail. Marbled Murrelet! My eyes went wide and I went right to the Cornell site again. 

This is my current guess on the identity of these birds. They are ones that I've seen this year, so it doesn't add anything to my list. But this may be the coolest thing I've come across. Marbled Murrelets are seabirds. Little penguinny things. And for the longest time, they didn't know where they were nesting. 1974 was the year when the first nest was discovered. They use old-growth trees, much as Spotted Owls do, nesting in remote areas, rather than in large colonies like nearly every other similar seabird. 

I'd heard that one could listen to these birds in some areas in the morning as the birds head out to sea, but I made no plans to stumble into the right places this year. Or I'm wrong, and it's an American Goshawk. lol. It's a win-win. Feel free to shoot me your thoughts if you give the recording a listen and have some expertise.

I did things, I went places, and found myself eventually back in Port Townsend, looking for. . . 

Shorebirds!

My first stop was Kah Tai Lagoon. I had seen reports of shorebirds and was a little confused. I couldn't figure out where there might be mud! But on arrival, I found out that the mud was all along the shore of the lagoon, right next to the walking path. Outside of some stretches where trees blocked the view, this was the perfect arrangement. 

Least and Western Sandpipers, as I'd seen everywhere, and finally some dowitchers!

On fresh water, the default is Long-billed Dowitcher, although I've come across Short-billed away from salt water. They're a pain to tell apart, honestly, but I have at least one where I feel good about calling it a Long-billed: 

Straight bill, low loral angle (basically the dark line from the bill goes more directly
to the eye, rather than curving sharply up), more black than white on the little bit of 
tail feathers showing, no pale chin, and bars on the side of the breast, rather
than spots. All of these are subject to variation, and can be affected
by a bad angle, bad lighting, etc!

The calls are very different from each other, but no calls were given here. They just sat with bills under wings, and occasionally did some energetic poking into the mud. 178 for the year!

One last stop - Oak Bay County Park. My feet were a bit sore, so I didn't do the full tromp out to the shorebirds, but from the closest point on the gravel, I did find one more bird for the year: 

So far away! But close enough for an easy identification. 

Semipalmated Plovers had been popping up on my alerts, but almost all from the Pacific Coast. They were on my radar for my trip, as they come through a fairly wide area in migration. 179!

And home. I was exhausted and sore, and had a good bit of work to do, including this blog, when I returned.