Category: Port Orchard

It’s often hard to decide what birds to post when you have seen a lot of birds, but sometimes the sheer number of shots of a particular species make it easy.  It was obvious that â€?”the bird of the day” on our last visit was the Surf Scoter.  I’ve never seen so many at Port Orchard, nor have I seen them so close.  Usually you’re lucky to get a shot of them as they paddle away as you walk toward them.  

Not on this day. This one was waiting for me by the moored boats as I walked down the ramp.

Instead of paddling away, he seemed to check me out for a few minutes

before going back to hunting for food.

I’ll have to admit that I got caught up trying to capture the strangely beautiful reflections in the water, 

but I did capture this shot of  one  feeding on a weird giant sea-worm, apparently a popular food source here because you often see empty shells on the marina decks.

The gigantic worm almost made me forget how unique that bill is on a male Surf Scoter, but it’s impossible to miss.

Although I see a lot of Goldeneye on our walks through Pt. Defiance Park, I never manage to get as close as I do at the Port Orchard Marina.  Usually I get the best close-ups when they are inside the marina, but on our last visit I had to chase them down along the sidewalk because there were so many boats in the marina.

Usually, they’re content to just float along, like this pair, 

but occasionally I get lucky and one will show off their uniques wing pattern like this

or take off from a running start

and land a few feet away for no apparent reason

other than to give me a chance to practice my photographic skills.

Whenever we bird the east side of Puget Sound we begin by walking Theler Wetlands and end by walking the Port Orchard marina. I suspect I walk them in this order because I discovered Theler long before I discovered Port Orchard — and because it is a habit.  If I were only interested in wildlife photos, I probably wouldn’t bother to walk Theler this time of year and would spend all of my time at Port Orchard because I can get a lot closer to the birds in Port Orchard and because they are so accustomed to people that they don’t immediately dive when you try to take a shot, not to mention that I am more apt to see favorites like this Horned Grebe, 

Pelagic Cormorant, 

Double-Crested Cormorant,

and Hooded Mergansers.