Birding on

River, mountains, eagles.

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

The Skagit River is renown for the migration of Bald Eagles who flock to the shores waiting to feast on the spawning salmon. On Thursday my uncle and I floated down the river with Blue Sky Outfitters to view and photograph the eagles.

We were getting a rather late start on the season. We learned from our guide prime viewing for the 13 mile float is late December through mid-January where river runners see upwards to 300 birds with as many as 80 perched on a well-located tree – it’s also nasty cold and grey.

Sunset, bird, moon.

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

We love the sunset and have been seeing plenty of really striking ones recently. Yesterday we viewed the show at Fort Ward State Park and while the sky was decent I think the next set of photos work because of the bird flying through the frame – scroll quickly to make it all movie-like.

sunset

sunset and bird

bird

sunset and bird

We have some beautiful farmland on the island and enjoy walking it off-season – today we went to Johnson Farm, home of the Harvest Fair.

Market, bird, beach.

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

We always enjoy our time in Port Townsend and so we decided to spend another perfect Saturday in November in our “Madison of the Pacific Northwest”.

cabbage

radish

carrots

potatoes

We serendipitously found our way uptown to the Farmers’ Market, busy hosting their season finale, where we danced to bluegrass, ate cookies and purchased perfect vegetables from Nash’s (the cabbage!), hard cider from Eaglemount Winery and delicious whole-wheat hearth bread from Pane D’Amore.

Dungeness Spit.

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

The would-be naturalists chose Dungeness Spit as this year’s Father’s Day destination. Some research on the web unearthed The 3 Crabs as a highly recommended crab shack right on the Sound with birding on the adjacent beach. Lunch plans decided, we packed the car and drove up to Dungeness.

We arrived at The 3 Crabs a bit early, lunch not served until 11:30am, so we tried to do some birding while we waited – the Sound did not cooperate.

Theler Wetlands.

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Sunday found yet another day blanketed under clouds but the budding naturalists ventured to the Theler Wetlands despite the gloomy weather. The wetlands promised some outstanding birding, a chance for our daughter to run around and some photo opportunities for me among its 75 acres of trails and wildlife.

On the way we stopped in Poulsbo for coffee because we were out of beans. Though we’ve driven through Poulsbo numerous times we’ve never before stopped at Sluys Poulsbo Bakery – what an oversight. We eat doughnuts maybe once a year, and Sunday was that day, as the chocolate glazed drew us in. This meant our daughter experienced her first doughnut and promptly did a doughnut dance. Priceless!

Birds, flowers and ants.

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Birds

We accepted IslandWood’s invitation today for a bird walk, our first foray into proper birding with a guide, binoculars, book and camera. Actually arriving on-time for the 8 am start was accomplishment enough; had we not seen a bird at least the get-everyone-ready time trial resulted in victory.

Since it was pretty overcast and the Saturday walk saw few birds Mark, our guide, would instead focus on calls. As we walked through the woods he would call name after name of birds, which pretty quickly became a mess in my head. I could either remember the name of the bird or the call, but not both.