December 14th
I started work on the 13th, finished on the 14th, got in my car and made my way to Jefferson County. Freelancing (writing in science education) has paid many of the bills, and moonlighting (hosting trivia and karaoke nights) has helped to round things out. I saw that both the Kitsap and Jefferson County Christmas Bird Counts were happening on the 14th. I could make it happen, but only if I did it this way.
I'll say that the drive over to Port Townsend, from 2:15 to 4:15 in the morning, was really not bad. I've definitely found that "tired" is a term of limited use for me. The more useful terms for me are "sleepy" and "exhausted". I was exhausted, but not sleepy during the drive. Not going to drift off the road, but definitely in need of some hours of sleep before jumping into any birding.
And here is where my thin understanding of hotels was exposed. In my head, there was just kind of always a person sitting at the desk of any hotel, ready to take you in and get you a bed.
lol
I rolled up to the Port Townsend Inn, bleary-tired, and looked at the sign. Front Desk Closed. In case of Emergency, call this number. I mean. . . okay, I was *emergently* tired, but I could sleep in my car in a pinch? And the phrase I'd heard used often in education, "A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part," resonated in my head.
I tried another hotel, The Tides... same sign, but promising a 6:30 opening. I saw it, and saw their emergency number, and stared at my phone, and back at the sign. I couldn't bring myself to wake someone just to get a bed. So, I drifted off to sleep in my car, in their parking lot.
I woke up close to breakfast time, wind gusting through town very very gustily. I tossed the camping pillow into the back seat, folded up the blanket and tossed it back too, and headed for MacDonalds. It was a good stopgap measure. I could at least make sure that my eating day would not be disrupted, even if my sleep day was.
Breakfast in me, I returned to the Port Townsend Inn, getting close to their advertised 7 AM opening time. As I head-bobbed outside their office, I saw a glimmer of hope - a person in the office, getting up to start opening. I got out of the car, peeked in, and ascertained that they were going to be sticking to their office opening time. I still wasn't an emergency. Fair. I went back to my car and waited.
At 7 AM, I saw the door get unlocked, and lights get turned on in the office. I stumbled in.
So. . . regardless of the presence of people in the office, it's really pretty unusual for people to stumble up to a hotel front desk looking for a room at 7 AM. In this case, they actually had no way to offer me a room on the spot. I was willing to pay for the previous night AND the upcoming night if I could get a room, but the gal at the front desk simply never been presented with this before. She sent off a text and offered me one of the chairs in the lobby.
After about 20 minutes of me nodding in and out of sleep, and no reply, she actually called another hotel to try to get me a room. And maybe that's just what hotels do, but I still saw this as a great kindness when she told me that the Harborside Inn could take me.
Checked in at 8, and they kindly just charged me for a single night.
I collapsed for a few hours, got up and admired the view from the room.
And I was off to join the crew for lunch in Nordland.
Nordland
What a neat little spot. I'd stopped here once or twice over the course of the year. The waterfront, I assumed, would be counted by another group, but I took some long looks, particularly enjoying it as a pair of Hooded Mergansers dove, both coming up with fish in their bills.
Otherwise, I was mostly seeing Buffleheads, so I took a stroll up Beveridge Lane, which runs away from the freeway just north of the store. It had been so violently windy in the morning! At this hour, the wind had died some, and the sun was even attempting to peek through the clouds.
Sparrows worked the brush and lawns at homes along the road. Mostly Golden-crowned Sparrows. Among the other birds in the mix, I was happy to see a Varied Thrush. Have I mentioned that this is my favorite bird?
The rest of the crew arrived, including the leader, Gary. Gary and I had actually met while I was out and about birding in November, so it was nice to get tossed into his group. I got a text that the crew was retuning and met up with them inside the Nordland Store.
The wind was the story of the morning. Overnight, there had been sustained winds of nearly 30 miles an hour, and it had settled down to maybe 20 for most of the morning. This had kept the birds under cover, by and large. Some spots had been unproductive, some spots had just been skipped altogether on the assumption that the wind would make it fruitless. The wind had also left the general store without the ability to process credit cards. Fortunately, I was able to secure a 0% cash loan with a simple promise too settle up later at the banquet.
Have you been to a Christmas Bird Count? Have you been birding? I suppose any event like this is going to bring together an interesting cast of characters. If you're into people-watching, I strongly suggest that you give your hobby a try under the auspices of birding. You'll get some good ones! The common denominator for the morning (and on nearly all birding trips), was that the people were all pretty darn pleasant.
They'd also all come in uniform, something that I have repeatedly thought that I should do some day - the all-weather pants, the rainproof boots, the brimmed hat - but here I was again, dressed for any old day in my jeans. Honestly, it'll probably take an incident - something where I end the day deep in regret for my cotton-based mistakes. But in the fifteen years or so that I've been birding, that regretful day has not arrived. Maybe I've been getting into my car and waiting for the downpour to stop? Who knows. But for the time-being, I'm going to continue the unimaginable practice of birding in jeans!
We went through the list of places from Gary's map. "And we don't need to go there... it's just going to be too windy," was heard multiple times during the morning. It was interesting to watch this thought collide with my silly optimism. What kind of an idiot goes to a beach in a fresh breeze, expecting to find any birds? This kind of idiot, likely. Maybe it comes from inexperience. Maybe it's the principle of the thing as well. For the scientific piece of a Christmas Bird Count, it feels odd to make a prediction (no birds) and to confirm it simply by not looking?
To be fair. . . if we are trying to count the birds in an area, heading to places where they would be most expected is also scientifically sound! I just figured that over the course of a long day, both plans might be squeezed in. Regardless, we made some good plans, got into our cars, and headed out.
That One Road off of Schwarz
Some nice little surprises popped up as we walked the main roads - Bushtits, and a flock of Pine Siskins were the first ones found by the group for the day. Wind was decreasing, and the birds seemed to be coming out. We ended at a field on the private property in question. It looked like a nice spot for birds! Close to residences, and some open space with blackberry brambles scattered here and there. But nothing really came out.
At one point, I was invited to "make that pishing sound" if I knew how to do it.
I gasped inside! It's rare that I run into a group of birders that doesn't include a pisher or two. It's almost refreshing and brings the birding back to "birdwatching" in many ways - don't bug the birds, just let them do what they do, and watch them when they make themselves watchable. And, of course, there's a whole range of practices, techniques, and mythology surrounding pishing! I've seen everything from... playing twenty minutes of mob tapes relentlessly to find (and to the surprise of notbody, to photograph) a bird... to bird count area leaders who think that pishing ultimately kills birds.
These two ends of the spectrum act with such belief, that I can't pretend to have any True Beliefs on it. I just assume that there are grains of truth in both practices. And I pish a little. It really does get birds to pop up with not much effort. And, at least in my head, keeping it to a minimum will at least have a minimal effect (positive, negative, or otherwise) on the life of a bird. And I'm okay having minimal effects on things.
On this particular day, however, it was slim pickings. A few of the expected sparrows, some kinglets, and not even so much as a Red-breasted Nuthatch in the wooded areas where we walked. My legs were happy to get out for the walk, at any rate. Happiness was not on the menu a short time later when we returned to our cars.
The cars were, again, parked between a fence and the road, on a grassy area just wide enough to take us. As we returned, the owner of the fence (and naturally, the home back inside the fence, and apparently the area where we had parked), came out to sort things out.
The guy was a little upset, and rightfully so, as we'd made some pretty good ruts in the grass. This wasn't the grass that he gazed at from his living room window, sure, but in my head, that didn't really matter. I like to *not* run afoul of people's private property while birding. Interestingly, it happens most often when I'm out birding with others! Members of the group provided apology words, if not actual remorse, noting as soon as he was gone that "he was upset that we rutted up his muddy corner", or something dismissive like that. I didn't mind moving on to another spot, needless to say.
Fort Flagler
We arrived at a parking area on the South end of the park. We looked over the maps to determine which parts had been done by other teams, and which had not. In the end, the decision was made for most of the crew to get started on a walk of some not-yet-birded trails, while Pete and I tackled Marrowstone Point and the main beach and campground for the park.
I'm so glad I got the time with Pete, brief as it was. We got to chatting and realized that we had both spent time in Yakima. With some digging we discovered several different connections, including people and places. When we got to Marrowstone, he let me hop out and walk the area a little. His knee kept him from doing a lot of walking, and the morning had already asked a good bit of him. I walked to the beach shore and found nothing but huge whitecaps. The wind was really tossing things around!
A Golden-crowned Sparrow on the beach, some Buffleheads in a little pond, and a Glaucous-winged Gull, looking surprisingly unhybridized, mixed in with other gulls on the shore.
Pete's knee got to him, and he had to skedaddle, but we were definitely well-met.
At the campground, I knew that shorebirds, particularly the Rock Sandpiper, might be on the most-wanted list. I arrived and found the birds on the campground lawn. Bingo! I moved my car around to use the scope on my windowsill. And they moved. I moved the car a little bit and repositioned the scope. And they flew.
This is just part of the game. Birds are gonna be birds! So, I got out of my car and made my way towards the spit. The little spit at Flagler was another place on the list of "probably not going to be any birds there". It was just the first one that actually had some birds. Sanderlings skittered around at close range, and I found a bunch of Black Turnstones harboring a single Surfbird fugitive.
As I got further out on the spit, I got closer to the pile of shorebirds. There was also a pile of gulls - with some closer looks, I found that this pile included an Iceland Gull. Not new for the year, but a nice surprise that I'd only come across once before during the year in Jefferson.
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| Likely a bonus Iceland Gull behind this one too |
As I got closer to the shorebirds. They flew back to the lawn. Getting my steps in. Yay! So back I tromped, scope in hand. I finally got close enough to set up the scope in a good spot for scanning through the birds. In addition to the Black Turnstones and Sanderlings, there were many Dunlin and Black-bellied Plovers.
With some work, I also found the Rock Sandpiper.
Back into the car to warm up a little, jot down notes, and look at images on the camera. I noticed another birder returning from the spit. Ali was a leader on the other half of Marrowstone Island (I was technically from the "other" half, as this part of Flagler was in their zone. I got out and chatted with her, confirming that she had already found and tallied every bird I'd stumbled across. One of the more productive birders in Jefferson County this year, it surprised me not at all that I had nothing to add to her list!
We did decide that the wooded area abutting the campground would still be a good place to walk and tally without me doubling any counts, so we said our goodbyes, and I did just that. Nothing spectacular, but on a day like this, the Red-breasted Nuthatches I found even seemed spectacular. As the day calmed, the birds seemed to be coming out a little bit more. I wrapped up, texted the rest of the group for clarification with directions, and returned on the road back toward Port Townsend.
Chimacum/Port Townsend
I needed to stop at Finnriver Cider to make my last stop for the year. What a great decision it was to hop into their program for the year! The bottles have been delicious and/or good gifts to others during the year, and I've come to associate their bustling tasting room with the end of a good day of birding. My favorite this time around, for largely sentimental reasons, was their Fruits of the Forest. They basically took all of the berries that make my kids nervous (along with chokecherries, which I have almost certainly not tried), and made a cider that just tastes like a forest snack. Thimbleberries are not listed in the ingredients, but the taste was reminiscent of them. Highly recommended.
From here, I grabbed some apples at Chimacum Corner to bring to the banquet, grabbed cash from my room at the hotel to repay Gary, and zipped off to the banquet.
The Rosewind Common House was the site of the banquet. I found Gary early, and made my way in. Interesting place! shoes came off, and slippers were made available. People were depositing their dishes of food. There was chili, of course. I don't think CBCs are legally able to submit their data unless chili is served at the CBC banquet, right? :D I found a few people I recognized, and we eventually got settled in to do some of the recaps and tallying.
This is always the fun part. I love hearing about the surprises, and the stories as we go through the list of birds in taxonomical order. Beyond the general interest in birds that were absent, or surprisingly present, I was of course making note of any birds that I might want to chase the next day. Rough-legged Hawk and Canvasback sounded like the best candidates for that. A Yellow-bellied Sapsucker had been found, but not relocated, and a Short-tailed Shearwater had made a brief appearance at Point Wilson, but neither of those sounded particularly amenable to a chase.
We wrapped up, stepped outside for a listen to a Great Horned Owl under a clear sky, then wrapped things up for the night.
I returned to the Harborside Inn and absolutely collapsed after a lovely day.
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