Month: April 2014

At the Port Orchard Marina

After Friday’s trip to Theler, I made my usual stop at Port Orchard to see if the Horned Grebes had left as I had predicted. As I entered the marina I was greeted by a large number of gulls, and this one flew over my head with a small starfish in its beak,

Gull with Starfish

closely followed by another gull squawking very loudly

Gull chasing another Gull to get food

Not too much later I encountered another gull

Gull with Starfish

having a hard time fitting a whole starfish in its mouth.

I was also surprised by a Pigeon Guillemot that also seemed to have a starfish in its beak.

Pigeon Guillemot

Since I hadn’t managed to get very close to the Pigeon Guillemots at Westport, I thought it was nice of this one to come up right in front of me.

In the same vein, I spotted this Western Grebe a ways off shore, a bird I’d hoped to see at Malheur but hadn’t.

Western Grebe

Although the majority of the Horned Grebes seemed to have left (or were spending the afternoon at another nearby site) there were four or five Horned Grebes in various stages of breeding plumage.

Horned Grebe

Spring Flowers at Theler

I spent most of this week at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge, partially to get a â€?”sunshine fix,” but, as often turns out, it was great weather here in the Puget Sound area while I was gone. When I got up Friday morning the skies were blue, and I knew it would be a sin to go to the YMCA and get some much needed exercise. Instead, I headed to Belfair to see what had changed in the last week. The birding wasn’t exactly great, but the Spring flowers were an entirely different matter.

One of the trilliums at the Wetlands’ entrance was beginning to turn purple.

Trillium

The Oregon Grape was in bloom.

Oregon Grape blossoms

The Shooting Star lit up shady areas in the garden

Shooting Star

even brighter than these bell-like purple flowers.

bell-like purple flowers

The highlight of the walk, though, had to be the Cherry and Apple trees that line much of the trail.

tree blossoms

The flowers were so impressive that I was hardly aware that the best bird of the day was a Stellar Jay,

Stellar Jay

which I could probably have gotten a better shot of in my backyard.

The Butterfly Gardens with Lael

It’s surprising how easy it is to be so distracted by a disappointment that you don’t realize just how good of a time you are actually having after the disappointment. In fact, it wasn’t until I started writing about what I did last week when I couldn’t go to Malheur that I realized what a great time I actually had.

I capped off the week by taking Lael to the butterfly garden at the Pacific Science Center. Although there were a lot of people there because of vacations we still had a great time.

I’m sure that I’ve included pictures of these kinds of butterflies in years past, but I see them so seldom that they all seem “new” to me. I’m pretty sure that I said that this one reminded me of a geisha girl:

butterfly

I just love the curled proboscis on this one.

butterfly"/

But I have no memory of this one, and they were all over on this visit.

butterfly

I don’t know whether we finished quickly at the Butterfly Garden because they were trying to get lots of people through or because they didn’t seem as “special” as they have in the past, but we ended up with more time than usual to do other things.

Lael had a good time at the seashore exhibit, where kids have a chance to actually touch the animals/plants found in tide pools.

Lael

And we even had time left to walk down and see the fountain and explore some of the small gardens on the way there:

Lael

Of course, via tradition we had to drive to West Seattle and have fish and chips at Spuds for lunch.

Loons Change Plumage, Too

While taking pictures of the horned grebes at Port Orchard I happened to notice a pigeon guillemot. That, in turn, reminded me that I needed to go to Westport to see if the Common Loons have also begun to change into breeding plumage. So when it was sunshine predicted a few days later, I headed out to Westport.

The first Common Loons I saw were still in winter plumage.

Common Loon in winter plumage

Sure enough, though, some of the common loons had begun to change colors, like this one in breeding plumage.

Common Loon in breeding plumage

I love those black and white markings, but the green stripe around the neck is the real finishing touch.

As a bonus, I even discovered why there are so many loons at Westport.

Loon with Crab

Apparently they come for the same thing so many fishermen come for: crabs, though the ones they catch are considerably smaller.

As an added bonus, I even got to see my Pigeon Guillemot,

Pigeon Guillemot

with a cormorant thrown it.

cormorant