Perspectance

Saturday our bird class toured Whidbey Island. Armed with some old Binuxit 8×30 E.Leitz Wetzlar Coast Guard binoculars, a laminated chart of water birds, and a recording Ipod, I headed for the Muliteo ferry to meet the group.

Saturday, October 11 – Field Notes

enroute: Western Tanager? A yellow bird with black wing, tail and head (from underneath). It came out of a fir and pine forest at the edge of a clearing and
strongly paddled the air across the highway enroute to our first stop.

1. Crockett Lake @9:30 AM Sunny, breezy. Some beach cleanup group parked and let some spaniels run after a bit, but that did not seem to affect our sightings.
Bald Eagle - sitting atop phone pole in the parking area. From that perch, he was able to survey the vast saltmarsh, lake and Admiralty Bay. He flew off in the direction of the lake. Not bad for first spotting. Sue’s Swarovsky scope allowed us to see every feather. A few minutes later up the road, we watched it clean blood off it’s bill from eating.
Great Blue Heron, at least one big one in the marsh.
2-3 other herons, Sue says likely Great Blue, but we wonder if it is a Little Blue or a Green Heron. Seemed smaller in comparison, but Sue says to notice the size compared to stop sign. The two in dispute were a little bigger than the sign. One sat for a long while on a fencepost, the others hunted in the grass. In the scope, we see green on the head of one, another had more of a whitish head, and to me at least two of the herons looked much smaller than the magnificent Great Blue that took off flying.
Rough-legged Hawk – Saw two of these hunting over the marsh. Got a great look underneath: One large checker under each wing. White band under black-tipped tail, white speckles on wing w/ black tips. As it lit and sat on a post, we observed it was greenish around bill, had white shin feathers blowing in the breeze, and as it spun around and stretched, showed the tail barred on top.

2. Keystone Ferry? Though this was not a stop on the map; I am going from memory days later, was driving follow the leader and one of my notes says Pt. Townsend ferry, but that doesn’t make sense. There was a little ferry dock in a tiny bay I think. (I need to keep better notes!) First we looked out to an old large abandoned pier in the water where dozens of cormorants were gathered.
Double Crested Cormorant – sunning in characteristic wing-drying position was markedly larger than the others and the scope revealed yellow near the bill.
Pelagic Cormorant - was not listed on my chart, but the Brandt’s was. Brandt’s not enough smaller however. In the guidebook, we see the pelagics do live here and are enough smaller.
3 diving ducks – Harlequins according to id from classmates and Sue who says this is one of her favorites that she sees on Greenlake a lot. Had red on side and a “fake white eye spot”, grey neck. One was a female.
Common Loon – This was a little tricky because the bold markings were gone as the bird was mottled w/ gray (starting to get winter color), but still had the charateristic neckband. I thought it seemed smaller than 23 inches though.
Marbled Murrelet? – This was my favorite sighting of the day because the bird could have been so many things. I’ve always wanted to see one of these mysterious creatures who nests far inland in old-growth forests and, Sue thinks, walks to the sea! I sketched the little mottled gray squatty bird floating in the protected cove near the ferry dock. It’s bill seemed to me to distinguish it from a Cassin’s Auklet which is what I first thought from its gray color on my chart. I don’t think everyone was conclusive on this id though.

3. Ft. Casey State Park – cold, sunny, very windy
We gave up looking out to sea, too windy, just lots of gulls. The group fans out. Sue and I go up into the woods where there is lots of bird sound and flitty action high in the trees. I record several things onto my Ipod- later will link to what I saw and have learned to identify:
Red-breasted nuthatch – “Yank, yank, yank” Sue first identified the call, and a little later I saw three or four crawling and chasing each other down the bare part of a fir tree.
Yellow-shafted Flicker – heard all over the forest before seeing red and black moon swooping tree to tree.
Chestnut-backed chickadees – brown patch on the side in back of of black head, soft gray bodies, and Mountain chickadees (no brown) cheerful and busy at many levels of the conifers.
Juncos – everywhere in thickets of staghorn sumac “Eh, eh, eh, eh”
Sue says she thought she heard the high-pitched sqeak of a Kinglet.

4. Ebey’s Landing (Again, I think this is where we stopped.) My yellow index card-sized postIts each have sketches and marking notes about birds, but I forgot to note where they were. Sue had provided us with maps and marked stops, so I had thought it would be easy to remember where things were by the stack order of my postIts. Not so. Next time!
Surf Scoters – many swimming together offshore seen in scope with yellow, black and red bills
Horned Grebes – two swimming offshore looked like Western with black and white neck, but squattier and much smaller than the Western. Scope showed red eye on white winter feather which distinguised it from the Eared Grebe.

5. Coupeville, lunch stop
Janet and I headed for a warm coffee and sat in the sun on a bench outside the bakery eating our lunch for a long time, learning more about her work. With only 15 minutes left, we jaunted up to the public path and saw a bald eagle in flight (Kevin had reported it flying right over him as he napped), and a juvenile bald eagle also. At first, we thought it was a very big hawk, but we noted the similar broad wing shape and size since it was flying near the other eagle. I sketched the long white streak pattern of the under wings which matched the picture in the Peterson field guide back at the car.
Belted Kingfisher - Sighted from the pier in Coupeville, we saw it catch a little fish after it dove off a tall boulder next to the water. Flew back to some dead branches on the beach.
White Winged Scoters - hundreds it seemed flew into the bay near the dozens of commercial mussel piers which we were able to see up the hill from downtown Coupeville. They were mixed in with surf scoters too, which was easy to tell once Sue set up her scope under the Madrona tree. Eyes of the white-winged are red on a white patch.

6. Kennedy’s Lagoon?
Another Kingfisher, but this one seemed noticably larger to me. Wonder if this is because we watched from a closer distance or are there two kinds? It was fishing in the lagoon on one side of the road. There was the water of Penn Cove across the highway with more scoters I think. Missing notes for this stop.
Ring-necked Pheasant – Right before the stop sign to turn left onto the big highway (20?), there were hunters in the farm fields to the left and we were noticing how much the high grass must shelter other things hunters would want. Just then, a magnificient pheasant climbed p out of the ditch. The other cars were already in the intersection, so they missed it.

7. Partridge Point
Looking west over the big water, we spotted more grebes. With just binoculars I could tell they were the squattier ones again, but it took Sue’s scope to see the red eye on white and confirm Horned Grebe again.

8. Dugualla Bay, north of Oak Harbor
I think because it was getting late, we skipped Sunset Beach, driving on through Oak Harbor. I think it was here we saw some ducks that were hard to identify. Conclusion of group (mostly w/ Sue’s prompting) that they were American Widgeons. They had a white head stripe (on top)and top of neck and throat, lightly ruddy underneath the body. There were different ages and sexes too which mottled things up a bit, but I guess the white top of head was the key marker for this kind of duck.
Kildeer - two or three or 4 brown and white flapping flags swooped right over and past us in tight formation, shish kabob legs lighting so gingerly on the cobbled beach.

Home again…About 4ish, the group split up with the Seattle group friving up to Deception Pass for one last stop before heading home via I-5. As I didn’t need to transport anyone back, and because I had driven that long stretch of freeway twice the past week, I decided to feast my eyes on more of the pastoral island scene and catch the ferry home. It would have been faster too had I not arrived at the ferry just as it was pulling away. The day had been relaxing for me and I melted away to gull music as I waited, glad to have spent a day this way and looking forward to more bird reading.

Field guides

– Although I own a number of field guides, Sue had said something in class about how birders often don’t do a lot of guidebook searching while in the field. The readings were also indicating much more emphasis on recording observed detail rather than dissecting the subject with a book. But because I have tended to look out at the water and mentally categorize everything simply as either gull or duck, I wanted at least a cheatsheet of hints. Mac’s Field Guide to Northwest Coastal Water Birds was a great introduction for me. I would know that these birds actually live where I would be looking and I would not get lost in pages of irrelevant detail. Sue brought plenty of guidebooks too, and we spent a lot of time at each stop looking birds up in them. While my cheatsheet was helpful to get oriented to at least the type of bird, and others in the group used it too, there was a point when I was confusing a Common Loon (obvious to Sue) with possibly a Pigeon Guillemont. Sue suggested I needed to stop referring to my chart so much and get into the guidebooks to distinguish features. The books are really necessary because identification of species is complicated by birds having various markings at different seasons and ages of the bird’s life.