Olympic Birding, My Last Pics

Ferryboat approaches Port Townsend ferry dock.  The water really is that blue.

This lone Sanderling was acting like a “rockpiper” on the boulders at Point Wilson Lighthouse.   From this location we found dozens of Pigeon Guillemot, a dense float of about three dozen Rhino Auklets, saw pairs of Marbled Murrelets and one tiny Cassin’s Auklet.

Dozens of Pintails were grazing in the tall grasses near the Keystone Ferry Terminal on Whidbey Island.  There were also Marsh Wren, Harrier, Bald Eagles and another handful of duck species there.

Left: Kingfisher on pole at Keystone Ferry Terminal.  The right hand Kingfisher was along the beach at Fort Ebey State Park on Whidbey Island.

House Finch at Audubon Center, Sequim, WA.

Black-capped Chickadee at Audubon Center feeder, Sequim.  The center is located in Railroad Bridge Park on the Dungeness River.  Good riparian habitat for birding.  The bird in the logo of the local Audubon Society?  Male Harlequin’s head.

Here’s website for the Dungeness River Audubon Center.

Here’s website for the Olympic Peninsula Audubon Society, complete with their Harlequin head logo.

Asian Ducks in Oregon

Dabblers from Siberia.  There was a Common Teal on Sauvie Island and a Eurasian Wigeon in a farm pond in the Scappoose Bottoms.*  Lots of plain old Yankee ducks about as well.  Eleven species of ‘Merican ducks.  In Europe they consider the Common Teal to be a separate species.  The AOU is the North American arbiter of the species splitting business and they don’t agree, still lumping Green-winged and Common.  The Common male lacks that spiffy, vertical white shoulder bar that denotes the male Green-winged Teal.  Most numerous duck of the day: a plentitude of Pintails.

Mew Gull paddling about a farm pond along Dike Road, Scappoose Bottoms.  Same pond that held numerous Wigeons including the Eurasian male.

One of the many Song Sparrpws that inhabit the dense berry tangles along the channels and canals of Sauvie Island.

Here’s is one of several Bald Eagles seen today.  This one was watching a channel at the foot of his tree.  And here’s that same bird, giving me the eagle eye.

*Scappoose Bottoms is a geographical, not an anatomical term.