I Used to Hate Birds

This week has been a good one for Broughton Beach.  Not as good as in 2015, but still pretty damn good.  I went out one morning and found no one on the beach, only a coyote.


That big black patch on its neck seems to be blood, and I'm guessing it got into a scuffle with an off-leash dog.  After it saw me approaching it went up to the bike path and started heading west, but then some joggers spooked it back my way. 


It's got to be rough trying to keep a low profile at Broughton.


American Pipits are back and I had my first couple of fall on the mud.


My friend Tait was also out on the mud looking for birds and we decided to try walking through the willows for longspurs.  Big flocks of Greater White-fronted Geese were migrating overhead.


I looked back at the gull roost area and noticed a small gull had joined the party.  We walked back towards it, still unsure if it was a Bonaparte's or something more exciting. 


I was thinking it sure looked like the Sabine's Gull we had…

The last few weeks I have spent quite a bit of time birding around Clark County, across the river from Portland.  I like it over there and my future home base will be over there so I need to keep my eBird stats up in that county.  That's right, I will someday be a Washington birder rather than an Oregon one.  Put that in your pipe and smoke it. 

On Labor Day Jacob and I went out to the Shillapoo Wildlife Area along Laframbois Road and had a great time with migrants and shorebirds.

Greater Yellowlegs

Least Sandpiper

We didn't find anything unusual but it was a solid morning of birding.  On the way back to town for lunch I forced him to look at pigeons so I could eBird them for him, filling a ridiculous hole in his county bird list.

Last week I went out to the fields north of Shillapoo Lake to see what could be found.  American White Pelicans were the most conspicuous birds, flying over almost constantly.  eBird still can't handle the numbers of pelicans in this area. 


A har…

Maybe by calling this post "End of summer" summer will in fact end.  It's not that I haven't had a good time this season, because I have, but I am over the heat, the smoke, the haze, the butt sweat (not to mention the hurricanes, the floods, the wildfires and now the earthquakes).  There have been birds though, many that have yet to make it to the blog.  So let's begin.

Last Thursday was a regular day.  I was walking Rexi home from Jacob's son's elementary school when I received a text from Seagull Steve.  "So are you driving to Seattle right now?"  I checked Tweeters and found the reports that a Swallow-tailed Gull had shown up in Seattle, a ridiculously rare bird (a MEGA if you will) that belongs in the Galápagos, not the Pacific Northwest.  It did not take much to convince Audrey to drop everything and get in the car to Seattle, never mind the facts that one:  she was at work, and two: that she would have to drive all the way to Malheur once …