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| Great weather at Bottle Beach |
Over the weekend I attended the Grays Harbor Shorebird
Festival for the fifth time. They offer tours, a keynote speaker and a few
vendors. We bought our first pair of Vortex binoculars from the Backyard Bird
Shop in Gig Harbor at the first festival we attended. We like them so well we
bought a second pair and a scope from Vortex in following years.
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| Immature Bald Eagle at Tokeland Harbor |
This year I took tours to the Westport area and Quinault, and on Sunday took advantage of hands-on help from the keynote speaker, Clay Taylor, Swarovski’s
digiscoping expert. No new birds this trip, but we did get some great views of
many of the shorebirds and even a few others. The marginal weather this year
dampened things a bit, especially on the Saturday trip to Quinault.
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| Sandpipers in the lee of the hummock as the tide comes in |
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| No Peregrine, but something spooked the birds |
Grays Harbor is one of the most important stops on the
Pacific Flyway as millions of shorebirds fuel up on their way to their Arctic
breeding grounds. On Friday, we took a yellow school bus to Westport and the
nearby villages of Grayland and Tokeland. Fortunately, I did not have to share
my seat. School buses are not really built for tall adults. The highlight of
this tour is Bottle Beach, a few miles east of Westport. A nice new boardwalk
leads to a blind overlooking the beach although the best way to view the birds
is to get there about two hours before high tide, stake out a nice sandy spot
on the gentle sloping beach and wait for the tide to push the birds to you. I
have watched really well-prepared photographers let the water come up and
around them to get what must be fabulous close-ups of the birds as rising tide
forces them closer and closer. Even our larger group did not scare the birds as
we managed to stay quite still and quiet. While the peregrines did not spook
the birds on this trip, they can create a good deal of excitement and great
pictures of shorebirds blasting off to avoid the danger.
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| Dunlin in breeding plumage |
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| Dunlin not ready for prime time |
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| Short-billed Dowitcher |
Saturday, a much smaller group of ten rode in the Lake
Quinault Lodge van with one of their guides and two other leaders to the
Quinault Rain Forest. Unfortunately, the rain forest lived up to its name
causing many of the birds to be quieter and more elusive.
Nevertheless, we were able to get some good
views of a pair of dippers and Bunch Falls and some other fairly rare birds
including an Evening Grosbeak and Purple Finch. We took a short walk along the lake
shore leaving from the Lodge which took us right past the spot where I lived
when I started elementary school. The condemned house we lived in has been
replaced by a newer model retaining its great view of the lake and short walk
to the water where I remember learning to float as Dad and I went down there
nearly every evening in the summer while Mom cooked dinner for the four of us.
I learned to swim the next summer in the pool at Concrete High School. As those of us who live in the Northwest know, summers are usually warm and
sunny most of the time. The rain record at the lodge showed rainfall to be over
20” most of the winter months, but under 5” during the summer. The winter we
lived there (1955-56) the rainfall was typical, but the timing must have been
unusual because the lake rose about ten feet coming within a couple of feet of
flooding our house. It did rise enough to creep into the garage.
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| Can you find the Dipper. These small gray birds love water like this where they wander the rocks in the rushing water to catch bugs and small fish being washed down stream. The nest is often hidden behind rocks or under logs in midstream. |
Sunday, I spent a few hours with the digi-scoper, learning
more about how to make use of the scope as an extra-long lens for photography. The
last few pictures show how amazing the results can be. It took us an hour of
exploration before we found a suitable site on the beach for the pictures. But
finally, we did arrive at a spot where the sun was on the right side of the birds
and we could get in some guided practice. Gulls, Marbled Godwits, and Western
Sandpipers provided the subjects.
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| Western Gull |
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| Immature Western Gull |
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| Marbled Godwit and Semipalmated Plover with Western Sandpipers in the background |
