10/02/2022   Portland Marathon  (link to here)
Richard ran the Portland Marathon today.

10/3-8/2022   Three days, Four misses (Neah Bay I)  (link to here)
Lest I forget how frustrating the first week of this month has been, we have chased and missed four new birds for the year in the past six days: Orchard Oriole (10/03), Palm Warbler (10/03,07), Brown Booby (10/07) and Leach's Storm Petrel (10/08). Not that there were no benefits to being out in the field on those three days, but I would have enjoyed them more had we found at least one of our targets.
While Richard was running the marathon in Portland on Sunday, Louis K and Alex S found the oriole and the warbler out in Neah Bay + so on Monday 10/3 at 5:30AM we enlisted Richard and Donna to help us down the front steps of our Air B&B (I had worried all night about getting down those steps) and we set out for Neah Bay. When we pulled into town l+ six hours later we could find neither the oriole nor the warbler though we spent the next six hours searching for them. Five hours after that we pulled into our driveway. It had been a long day. I think the highlight of the day for me was the espresso and shortbread cookie we picked up at All Wrapped Up Coffee Shop + in Montesano.
On Friday 10/7 we teamed up with Liam to scour Ocean Shores for a Palm Warbler. Though none had been reported, we figured there had to be one around. If there was we did not find it but while we were searching for it, Charlie W discovered a Brown Booby hanging out in Commencement Bay +. It lingered long enough that we almost certainly would have seen it had we not gone to Ocean Shores, but it did not linger long enough for us to find it on our way home, though we tried. We did have a remarkable drive on the beach at Ocean Shores l+ though, encountering hundreds of plovers, Sanderlings and other shorebirds.
On Saturday 10/8 we rested for the morning on the South Beach at West Point l+ where sometime around 11:00 Delia (she and Ed had joined us a couple of hours earlier) spotted a dark swallow-like bird flying north offshore. After some miscommunication Darchelle was able to get her scope on it and identify it as a Leach's Storm Petrel. Neither Ed nor I had been able to see it so neither Delia nor Darchelle included it on their checklists. Although I enjoyed hanging out with our friends, Darchelle and I had not yet figured out a way for me to look through the scope so I mostly amused myself watching the people, up to 20 of them at a time, poking around on the beach as the tide went out. The most interesting of them was a threesome, two women and a man, who showed up fairly early in the morning. One of the women had a camera and the other was dressed in unusual clothing but I do not recall exactly what she was wearing, perhaps because she took most of it off to kneel down in the water just off the beach for a photo shoot. We shivered in sympathy but she did not appear to feel the cold.

10/09/2022   One day, Two birds (Neah Bay II)  (link to here)
Lest I forget how gratifying the chase for year birds can be, on this, likely our last "big day" of the year at least as far as new year birds are concerned, we picked up two of them, the Leach's Storm Petrel #367 and the Black-legged Kittiwake #368. They were five hours apart. The Storm Petrel was coursing southward over the Sound off West Point l+ at 9:05 this morning and the Kittiwake was sitting out in Neah bay l+ with 1200 California Gulls at 5:15 this afternoon. We did not get photos of either species but we did have good scope views.
This morning Darchelle and I figured out a way to lean the scope up against the wheelchair so I could comfortably peer through it for long periods of time. It is amazing how much more engaging it is to watch seabirds with a scope rather than without. I'd been watching gulls and Rhinos fly by for about an hour when John P, scoping with Raphael and others from behind the lighthouse, announced a Leach's Storm Petrel north of the point, headed south. I watched and waited while John called out the landmarks as the bird passed them - Skiff Point, the bluffs, the yellow buoy - and then it was in my scope, a as I wrote in my checklist entry. Darchelle did not see it but instead added her sighting to her checklist from yesterday. Total time invested in finding a Leach's Storm Petrel, about 10 hours.

10/12/2022   Broad-winged Hawk  (link to here)
A juvenile Broad-winged Hawk turned up in Discovery Park a few days ago. We did not immediately chase it because we had other priorities, including our second trip of the month to Neah Bay and some work for Darchelle, but today we were able to clear space for the rare Buteo. We saw one last May but had been unable to get a photo. We did not get a photo today either. Though I had an excellent view of the hawk from my vantage point m+ as it flew overhead, Darchelle was parking the car at the time and did not see it. The bird soared and glided south and southwest from the vicinity of the Utah Wetlands over to South Meadow, passing over the treetops about 70 yards in front of me. As well as being clearly smaller and more agile than the local Red-tails, it was also much paler, overall almost white below. The short tail and casual flight style immediately distinguished it from an Accipiter. Unfortunately without a photo it, like our previous sighting, will probably not be confirmed in eBird.

10/15/2022   Happy Birthday D  (link to here)

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10/16/2022   Neah Bay III  (link to here)
Michael H found a Tropical Kingbird out in Neah Bay yesterday so we drove out there early this morning, did not find it and returned home late this evening. It was disappointing to miss it; Tropical Kingbirds have been scarce this fall so we believed we had to try for this one. When we did not find it we assumed that it, like the one back in mid-September, had moved on. Michael remained in town and the next morning he not only relocated the Tropical Kingbird but found a Palm Warbler as well. Had we spent the night, as we considered doing and almost did, we could have seen both of those birds and still made it home at a reasonable hour. It is best not to spend too much time indulging in regret. After all, we will have additional opportunities to see both of those birds over the next month, right?

10/19/2022   Additional Opportunities  (link to here)
Nancy and Bill L are spending this week at Ocean Shores so we suggested to them that they find us a rarity while they were there. They did! Two days ago Nancy noticed a Palm Warbler at Bill's Spit. Ironically Bill missed it but yesterday they both saw it so today we drove down there instead of heading out to Neah Bay again.
Bill's Spit is a small brushy point of land extending 50 yards or so out into the bay from the east side of the Ocean Shores peninsula. The spit itself is not wheelchair accessible but Bill and Nancy assured us that there was an accessible viewpoint from which I could watch while Darchelle explored the spit and that if she turned up the warbler I would probably see it. There was a lone bare tree out near the point which the warbler would probably fly up into at some point. I was willing to try though not as optimistic about my chances as Darchelle seemed to be.
My willingness did not extend to a predawn departure so we did not reach Bill's Spit l+ until after 11, still early enough, I assured Darchelle, to find the warbler. She parked me at the overlook and walked out to the bare tree on the spit. It was not far, maybe 60 yards. I could hear her playing the recording of Palm Warbler calls and after a while, I even heard it respond, or was it a Fox sparrow? She had a glimpse of the bird in the dense brush along the shore and was pretty sure it was The Bird but it was nonetheless far from a definitive sighting.
Thinking to give The Bird a break, we drove over to the Coastal Interpretive Center and the old Ocean Shores Marina l+ across the street. Years ago that area was known for producing Palm Warblers. I knew that even before both Maxine and Liam told us so yesterday. I am pretty sure I searched that area for a Palm Warbler more than two decades before Liam was even born, but we appreciated his advice nonetheless. He and Maxine were right. We had not been there more than 15 minutes before Darchelle discovered our very own Palm Warbler. She even got photos, and got the car turned around in time for me to get a brief but diagnostic view of the bird before it flew off forever.
Total time allocated to the Palm Warbler, about 30 hours.
Liam was already planning to come down from Olympia after school to look for the Palm Warbler but was able to move his departure time up an hour so after Darchelle texted him about the Tropical Kingbird. We were still trying to relocate our Palm Warbler for Maxine when he and Elizabeth arrived. The Kingbird cooperated for him but the Warbler did not, nor did Maxine see it, as far as I know.
We enjoyed our little rare bird party though, with the top three eBird state year listers in attendance and helping each other out. It is a friendly competition that way. We are in first place with 368 species. Maxine is about five behind us and Liam, about fifteen behind her. The total number of species reported in the state this year to date is 383, so we've only missed 15 of them. That is actually quite a good record, especially considering our situation. Over the past seven years that total has generally been right around 390 but only last year did the top year lister exceed 362 species. Will Brooks smashed the previous record with his 376 species. If this year is typical, another 10 species or so should show up by December 31. I hesitate to guess how many of those we might be able to see but the low 370s should be well within our reach and the all-time record not inconceivable.
On our way out of town we drove the beach and photographed a familiar Peregrine, or at least a Peregrine with the same color bands as that one.

10/20/2022   News from New Hampshire  (link to here)
While we were watching the Tropical Kingbird, Tim and Mary were visiting Mom in Jackson. They brought Tim's mother Frances up from Virginia with them. Kirsten happened to be visiting as well. At some point during their visit, Tim delighted Mom not only by playing the piano for her but also by playing the piano with her. Mary recorded their duet and it's around here somewhere. BTW, the photos are courtesy of Tim and Mary.

10/22/2022   Neah Bay IV  (link to here)
We stayed home Friday, visiting with our houseguests Bonnie and Stephen, enjoying some rich aromatic coffee with them in the morning and a couple of IPAs with them in the evening. Saturday morning at the not unreasonable hour of 11:20 we set out again for Neah Bay. Our leisurely departure meant that we only had an hour or two of birding in Neah Bay before returning to the Bay Motel in Clallam Bay for the night. All of the accommodations in Neah Bay were either closed or already booked, as we had anticipated. The Washington Bird Records Committee was holding their fall meeting in Neah Bay and the expert birders on the committee had been planning to stick around afterwards to search for rare birds. Late October through early November is the prime time for vagrants from both Asia and in the southern United States to show up in Neah Bay. Saturday there were a few around - a Northern Mockingbird and a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher from down south and a Gray Catbird and a Palm Warbler from somewhere else - but we did not find any of them either Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning.
I'll let Darchelle tell the rest of the story, excerpted from a email to a birding friend written a day or two later.
Given the serendipitous nature of our Eurasian Skylark sighting, I figure we spent on that bird no more than 3 hours. It might well have been longer had not Elizabeth helped Darchelle to drag me at breakneck speed up the beach in pursuit of the other birders, and had not Bill T dragged me at a comparable pace all the way back to the car.
Now back to Darchelle's account.
The humble Butler's Motel + is not only one of the best places to stay in Neah Bay; it is also one of the premier birding destinations in the region. Situated in the approximate geographic center of the town only a block from the bay, it sits right on the edge of an extensive wooded swamp at the head of one of the tributaries of the Wa'atch River. Nancy maintains a half dozen birdfeeders in the backyard of the motel which over the years have attracted rarities including Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Dickcissel and Indigo Bunting, along with more prosaic residents which include at least one family of Raccoons and a boisterous gang of Rock Pigeons. We stopped by for a few minutes in the afternoon and found no rarities but the Raccoons and Rock Pigeons were taking turns, in a manner of speaking, at a bowl of birdseed in the backyard.

10/25/2022   Brown Booby #370  (link to here)
Around 1:15PM Darchelle received word that a Brown Booby (BRBO) was at that moment sitting on the anchor chain of the cargo ship Adelante in the middle of the Columbia River just below Vancouver. The Booby would be not only a year bird but a state bird and a North American life bird as well, but it was at least 5 1/2 hours away from Neah Bay. We would not be able to reach Vancouver until around 6:45PM, too late to see it. Hailing from the tropical Pacific, Brown Boobies show up in Washington occasionally but tend not to linger in the same location more than a few hours. Our chances of finding it would be slim at best but if it was still there tomorrow, we would drive down look for it first thing Wednesday morning. I did not expect to be making that trip; the bird was reported multiple times through the early afternoon but was not seen after 4PM.
I'll let Darchelle pick up the story again.
Once again I enjoyed the social aspect of chasing rare birds. Once again the top three eBird state year listers gathered in the field together to help each other out. Or at least they helped us out. Maxine's husband Mike and Liam's aunt Chris together hauled me off the beach and back up to the paved trail. That river sand is softer than its ocean equivalent and Darchelle would have had a very tough time getting me and my chair off the beach by herself. Back at our cars, we stood around in the parking lot visiting until rain broke up the party and we all went home. Cumulative time invested in looking for a Brown booby this year, 10 hours.
Now back to Darchelle's account.
What Darchelle does not mention in her account is that in order to facilitate my getting a glimpse of the bunting without getting out of the car, she had driven off the street onto the gravel trail around the perimeter of the park and had left me there obstructing the occasional passerby while she walked out into the ballfield to locate the bird. While she was out there a Seattle policewoman noticed our misdeed and walked over to investigate. The car windows were closed so I tried to tell the policewoman to go ahead and open the door but she couldn't hear me and became concerned that I was in trouble. I'm not sure what would have happened had Darchelle not noticed what was going on. She came running back and explained to the bemused officer what we were up to. Darchelle's strategy worked; I got a glimpse of the bird and she got photos.

10/28/2022   Neah Bay V  (link to here)
I was actually kind of up for this trip. After the Booby we stayed home for a couple of days and I got mostly caught up on my writing, though not on the photos. I did not expect to find anything new at Neah Bay despite it being prime time for vagrants to show up there. They just aren't that common. The prospect of not chasing anything in particular, just looking around to see what we could find, felt relaxing. I had another reason for the trip too. I had booked another appointment at Walgreens in Port Angeles to finally get my Omicron booster. We had canceled our previous appointments earlier this month in order to chase the Tropical Kingbird at Ocean Shores and frustrated about the wasted effort to secure those appointments, I had determined not to book any more but common sense prevailed and I was looking forward to getting the vaccine taken care of. Darchelle, concerned about suffering debilitating side effects while out on a birding trip, decided that she would wait to get hers later.
Friday morning we caught the 7:05AM ferry from Edmonds and watched the sky grow brighter as we drove west from Kingston. In Port Angeles we only had to wait about 20 minutes for my shot, which was so painless I thought maybe the nurse had faked it. We stopped briefly in Clallam Bay but failed to find a previously reported Tropical Kingbird. We did see lot of California Gulls along the beaches and one very large aircraft carrier, the nuclear-powered USS Nimitz, returning from San Diego to her home port in Bremerton. Do they still call a ship "her", I wonder? Anyhow, it was an imposing sight even several miles out in the Strait.
Once we arrived in Neah Bay we were not the only birdwatchers in town. Jason, Zach and Alex were beating the bushes all weekend and kept us apprised of their finds. We appreciated their friendly help, though we did not need it to find the Tropical Kingbirds, which were conspicuous around the northwest corner of town all weekend. They did let us know where the Palm Warbler was hanging out, and Darchelle was able to get photos.
She had secured two nights at Butler's Motel, in Room 1 this time, which proved to be cozy and comfortable. The toilet was still too low for comfort but at least it was accessible. We picked up espressos in the morning from Calvin's Crab House and they were quite good. Later in the day we returned for fish and chips, the latter cut from real potatoes and very tasty though I found the fish a bit tough and dry. We ate in our room and went to bed early, particularly on Saturday night when I felt pretty crappy from the shot.
We birded the town and bay all three days with a high count of species on Saturday when we found 60 l+ in five hours, probably one of our highest checklist counts all year. Later that afternoon we met up with Maxine and Mike at the STP but could not find the gnatcatcher they had seen a few minutes earlier. Nor could we find the Swamp Sparrows present last week.
Weather was moving in so Maxine and Mike were heading back towards Port Angeles for the night but we had already booked the room at Butler's so we drove out to Hobuck Beach instead. I waited in the car for 15 minutes while Darchelle searched the dune grass unsuccessfully for the Skylark, hoping for photos. It took her longer than we anticipated but we stayed in touch by phone. She got some nice photos, just not of the Skylark. On the way back to the motel we drove up Bahokas Peak for a somber view south over Hobuck Beach and beyond. We've heard the hawk-watching is excellent up there and hope to check it out someday.
Sunday morning was a little wet so we took our time getting out of Butler's, then birded the bay and town l+ for several hours, accumulating 49 species including several Kittiwakes. I had good views this time and Darchelle got some nice photos.

10/31/2022   Home  (link to here)
We wrap up October with 372 birds for the year (including two Exotics, which may or may not be included in our top 100 + total depending on when you look), 59,400 miles on the car, 11 1/2 Louise Penny novels listened to (the 12th underway) and a still-functioning fridge. During the month we added 6 birds and 40 checklists to our eBird totals for the year. We put 3500 miles on the car, spent 9 nights away from home, listened to 4 Louise Penny mysteries and visited Neah Bay 5 times.

11/04/2022   Blackburnian Warbler Neah Bay VI  (link to here)
Around 10:30 yesterday morning Jordan G reported a Blackburnian Warbler + out at the base of the jetty in Neah Bay on the WhatsApp chat group, By the time we noticed the notification, it was too late for us to catch the 12:30 ferry from Edmonds but we made the 1:35 PM boat and arrived 3 1/2 hours later at the gate across the jetty road. It was closed, as we had expected, and the footpath around the gate was two inches too narrow for the wheelchair. We had expected that too. With the sun about to set, we did not attempt to look for the bird that afternoon but instead went looking for help to get me and the wheelchair around the gate. We had already tried the Tribal Council office and while the woman on the phone was very friendly, she had no idea who might be able to unlock the gate for us, or help us to get around it.
Darchelle had booked a room for us at Butler's Motel and in talking to Nancy, we learned that her strong young grandson Daniel might be available to help us. She introduced Darchelle to Daniel's wife Ashley who promised to ask Daniel about it that evening and let us know. We picked up Cod and Chips at Bigginz + but this time substituted the Jalapeño Bites for the fries and settled into room 2 for dinner. Outside a storm had moved in with wind and heavy rain and more of the same forecast for tomorrow. Inside I huddled in my electric blanket while the wall heater ever so slowly warmed up the room, but both my fish and my Jalapeño Bites (which Darchelle also enjoyed) were delicious. Ashley texted us to say that they could meet us at the gate at 9 AM. That was good news but I was worried about whether Darchelle would even be able to get me out of bed and into the car in the morning. She had been limping around the room in a half crouch, unable to straighten up due to pain in her lower back which had become steadily worse through the day. I was also worried about how I was going to use the toilet since it was clear that Darchelle would not be able to lift me off the seat and back into the wheelchair but we were able to use a pee bottle while I sat on the edge of the bed. Overnight my worries did not keep me up but my aching shoulder, hip and thigh, aggravated by pressure after a few hours of sleep on my side, did. Sometimes I have Darchelle roll me over but with her sore back, she could not do that. After a stretch of misery that felt like hours but might have been only minutes, she was able to pull my hips a few inches towards her side of the bed and that alleviated my aches enough that I slept fairly well the rest of the night.
In the morning the wind had abated but the rain had not. Daniel and Ashley met us at the gate but I was not up for attempting the transfer around the gate in the rain so I waited in the car while Darchelle walked down the jetty road in search of the Blackburnian Warbler. About an hour later she returned empty-handed and wet. She had found a chicklet (chickadee-kinglet) flock with a Yellow-rumped Warbler but no Blackburnian. The camera had malfunctioned in the rain but she had been able to get a few photos.
We continued birdwatching around town l+. The rain continued too but the birds did not seem to mind it as much as we did. When small bird activity slowed down, we drove over to Hobuck Beach l+ and drove from the south end to the north end. The beach was misty and mystical but not very birdy. Expert birders strut their stuff by posting counts of the different species of gulls in the flock at the north and of Hobuck Beach. Perhaps due to the incoming storm, almost all of the gulls were roosting on the rocks on the far side of the river, too distant to distinguish in the dwindling daylight. We found only a handful of Glaucous-winged and Short-billed on our side of the river, with perhaps an Iceland or two.
As we left the beach the wind was picking up. Along the Wa'atch River gray curtains of dense drizzle swept up the valley, keeping pace with the occasional vehicle heading back towards town. We picked up Cod and Jalapeño Bites at Bigginz again and retreated to our quiet little room, plugging in the spare battery for the ventilator in case of a power outage.
Sabbath morning we awoke to bright sunshine. We had arranged to meet Daniel and Ashley at the gate at 9:00 AM again. Encouraged by the sunshine I agreed to join Darchelle on a walk down the road to the jetty to search for the Blackburnian Warbler again. Daniel gripped me in a bear hug and hauled me through the gap between the gate post and the boulder while Darchelle lifted the wheelchair over to the other side. Not easy but it worked. The stroll down the jetty road was not easy either. Shortly after we set out I had to pee. It soon became apparent that I would not be able to hold it but with Darchelle's sore back, it was not apparent that we would be able to manage the operation without help. Darchelle wheeled me back to the gate while I worried. Once there, she leaned me up against it and peeled down my snow pants, my insulated pants, my sweat pants and my underwear and I peed. She put me back together and we started down the jetty road again.
She parked me at the base of the jetty looking out the strait while she searched the chicklet flock in the trees behind us. She found a couple of Townsend's Warblers and perhaps a Yellow-rumped but no Blackburnian. A squall swept up the strait and lashed us with rain. Darchelle had brought our ponchos so we stayed dry but the chicklet flock had disappeared by the time the storm cleared. We texted Ashley and they soon arrived to help us around the gate again. This time Daniel just picked me up in his arms and deposited me in the passenger seat of our car. That was easy!
We roamed around town l+ until late afternoon searching for birds then drove over to the Transfer Stationt l+ on Quarry Road to look look for the Blue-gray Gnatcatcher again. This time we found it, and though I neither saw nor heard it, Darchelle got photos. Since I had already seen the bird back in May, that was fine with me. Back in our room, having had the Cod and Jalapeño Bites for two nights in a row, I tried the shrimp for dinner instead. They were good but the cod was better.
The eBird hotspot for Neah Bay is named "town and bay only", lumping together two very different habitats - the ramshackle residential area constituting the Makah tribal capital, so to speak, along with adjacent second-growth wet coniferous forest, and the shoreline, marina and sheltered waters of the bay itself. The variety of habitats along with the presence of migrants and wintering waterfowl makes for some of the highest checklist totals achievable anywhere in the state. Some birders have attained counts of over 90 species. While we are not among them, we did manage to find 60 species back on 29 October. Today, despite persistent sunshine and reasonably thorough coverage, we only counted 46 l+ but Darchelle got some nice photos for me to play with.
We began with an the hour or so watching Butler's feeders then worked our way over to Raven's Corner where Darchelle noticed the White-throated Sparrow among a crowd of other small birds. That was probably our best bird of the day. Next, we searched Ba'adah Village and scanned the mouth of the bay from there before following the waterfront west to the mouth of the little stream by Calvin's Crab House, unfortunately now closed for the next two months. That took us a couple of hours but did not yield as many interesting birds as we had hoped. After a stop at the the Native Grounds Espresso + food truck on 3rd Ave for espresso and breakfast, we worked the town for a while. We did not get breakfast because the grill had mysteriously shut itself down an hour earlier than usual. I solved the mystery by observing that we had switched to Standard Time last night. The timer on the grill was still on Daylight Savings time.
During the early afternoon the rain showers which had been obscuring Vancouver Island all morning drifted south over the strait so we left town under the same threat of rain which had greeted us when we'd arrived 70 hours earlier. Darchelle spotted the Barred Owl outside of Port Angeles on the way home. The owl and the Anna's Hummingbird are both relatively recent arrivals to the Olympic Peninsula. The hummingbird has not had much apparent impact but the owl has unfortunately driven the native Spotted Owl essentially to extinction in the region.

11/08/2022   Little Gull #371  (link to here)
I was happily puttering away at the computer yesterday afternoon around 1:00 when Darchelle dashed into the office announcing "We are leaving for Sullivan Dam in 10 minutes! Matt Y just saw a Little Gull. How soon can we get there?" Not soon enough, we realized to my relief. Even if we left in 15 minutes, we would not reach Potholes Reservoir before dark, or close enough to it. We would go first thing in the morning instead and hopefully the rare little gull, which I have not seen since 1981, would still be there.
The Little Gull had been seen + from the dam, foraging over the water with about 200 Bonaparte's Gulls. The viewing spot would not be wheelchair-accessible but we could probably view the bird from the fishing access not too far away. The weather would be miserable, cloudy with a chance of snow, temperature not much above freezing and the wind out of the north at 20 mph. Though there was talk of wheeling me out along the dam on a rocky and brushy trail, I was pretty sure I would not be getting out of the car all day. Maybe we would get lucky and the bird would be flying around close to the dam just when we happened to drive by.
We did leave first thing in the morning, slightly before dawn and almost before coffee. We did not see the Little Gull when we reached the dam l+ three hours later; in fact we did not see any gulls at all. We had driven almost the length of the three mile long dam before we saw a single gull and it was not a little one. We stopped and scanned for birds several times on our way back across the dam but not until we parked ourselves at the fishing access l+ and got out the scope did we find any Bonaparte's Gulls. Darchelle was able to pick out a handful of them well off to the north, not an easy task with the wind watering her eyes and numbing her fingers. We kept the car running for warmth while she scoped from the partial shelter of my open door and reported her findings.
"I've got it!" she announced about 10 minutes later. "Dark underwings, dark underwings" she repeated as the bird wheeled and dipped low over the water with a couple of Bonaparte's. "The Bonaparte's are all white underneath but this bird has dark underwings, and maybe a white spot at the tip."
Does it have a white body?" I demanded. "Does it have white on the leading edge of the upper wing? Can you see a white trailing edge on the wings? Where is it?" I could see three little white dots moving erratically just above the surface of the water. "Is it one of those three together?" I asked.
"Yes! It's the one in front, flying to the right, diving now, flying back up again, down again." she replied, confirming for me that it was the same bird I was following without benefit of optics. "The underwings are dark and the body is white. The upper parts are very pale, with a white rump or tail." I could not begin to see those details but her running description made it very clear that the bird she was watching, although the same size as the Bonaparte's, was clearly a different species. We had our bird!
Darchelle was not so sure. She had lost track of the bird in the scope, probably because it sat down on the water and was obscured by the waves. She had questions. "How can it be the Little Gull?" she worried. "Why wouldn't it have left with all the other Bonaparte's Gulls? What are the chances that I would find it in my first 10 minutes of searching? Where do you think all the Bonaparte's Gulls went? Are you sure that it is the Little Gull?"
Neither of us was totally comfortable having to rely solely on her description to identify the bird, but the bird that she described to me as she was looking at it could only have been the Little Gull. It was here yesterday and had apparently not moved on overnight. We were both somewhat reassured when we ran into Mason and Ben over at the state park boat launch. Scoping with them and with Bill and Nancy, Darchelle had spotted a very small and very pale gull sitting on the water down towards the dam. It appeared to have no black in the wingtips and if anything, was smaller than the Bonaparte's Gull sitting nearby. Darchelle did not happen to be watching when it flew, but Mason was and he confirmed that the underside of the wings was indeed much darker than the body. "It's the Little Gull" he asserted, and subsequently reported + in eBird.
Hoping that the gull might return for photos, we hung out until almost sunset but the bird did not reappear. Maxine and Mike showed up but did not find the bird; they were planning to spend the night and try again in the morning but we decided not to join them. Darchelle had a phone appointment at 5:30 PM and we made it back to the Days Inn in Ellensburg just in time. I sat in the car in the parking lot and snoozed a bit, then passed the remainder of the hour trying to remember the titles of the 12 Louise Penny mysteries we have listened to while driving around the state to see birds. I was able to come up with 10 of them. On the way home we began listening to #13, Glass Houses.
Total time expended for the Little Gull, 15 hours. It was a long day. While I enjoyed seeing the bright autumn colors on the East side of the mountains, and while I am of course grateful to be able to add the Little Gull to our year list, without being able to see the field marks myself the sighting was not very satisfying. It felt as though most of my birding for the day consisted of spotting ducks flying by and asking the other birders what they were.

11/11/2022   Neah Bay VII  (link to here)
While probably not accurate to claim that this long weekend in Neah Bay will be our last of the season, historical trends would indicate that it does mark the end of the peak season there for rare vagrants. For us anyway, it has not been much of a peak, and this weekend was no exception. A handful of rare birds were present but despite considerable effort by a cadre of capable birders, only one new one was located, and neither it nor any of the others were new for us for the year. On the plus side, Darchelle did manage to get good photos of many of them and we enjoyed social birding with friends, including Ed and Delia, Liam and Elizabeth, Mason and Ben and even Khanh T.
It is not often that we see both the sunrise and the sunset in the same day, though of course it it is easier to do that this time of year then any other. Today was one of those rare days. We packed ourselves into the car in Seattle at sunrise and wrapped up our birdwatching in Neah Bay as the sun set. We just missed the 7:50 ferry so caught the 8:35, stopped in Port Orchard for an espresso but the restaurant was closed so looked for a rare bird down at the landing below town then detoured out to Ediz Hook l+ in Port Angeles to find our own rare bird there instead. No rare birds.
Once in Neah Bay we stopped at the Harmony cabins where Elizabeth had helped us arrange for a room since Butler's was full. The room itself was accessible but the positioning of the furniture so tight that we could not fit the wheelchair past the front door. Room 5, also accessible, would apparently have worked for us but Liam and Elizabeth had already settled in there and we did not want to ask them to move (though I'm sure they would happily have done so) so Ed and Delia helped Darchelle upend the day bed and slide the hutch out of the way. Thus rearranged, we had space enough to get my wheelchair to the bed though the toilet, despite a relatively spacious bathroom, was positioned in such a way that we could not get me onto it from my wheelchair. That proved not to be a problem; I plan ahead not to poop while we are away from home and we used the pee bottle for peeing. Otherwise the room was cozy and well-lit and the bed was reasonably comfortable. Ed and Delia joined us for dinner and Khanh poked his head in to say hi when he arrived.
Liam and Elizabeth had arrived around midday and by the time we drove into town, Liam had already located the rarities +, including a Clay-colored Sparrow at Warmhouse Beach, two Tropical Kingbirds at the Senior Center and a Bullock's Oriole at Butler's Motel, though I think he may have found out about the oriole from Scott and Sierra who had already been in town for a day or two. In any case it almost felt like old times at Neah Bay with rare birds scattered around town for the finding.
Finding them was not our first priority though. Darchelle had bought a sledgehammer the day before and we were going to use it to beat on on the boulder blocking my way past the gate on the jetty road. All we needed to do was knock about three inches worth of chips off the offending end of the obstruction, so leaving me in the car, Darchelle went to work. I really wanted to help but of course that was out of the question; I could not even provide advice because the windows were all rolled up so I sat and fidgeted while she, then Delia and Ed, then Mason and Ben, all tapped away at the rock. Space was tight so it was clearly difficult to get a decent swing in but it appeared to me that by standing in the bushes off to one side, a person could have taken a good whack at it. Despite a lack of whacks, after about a half-hour Darchelle and Delia were able to sneak the wheelchair through the gap and we were ready to bird the jetty road - tomorrow.
We spent a mostly-uneventful Saturday morning birding around town L+ on our own, everyone else having flown the coop by the time we rolled out the door and down the ramp to our car. We had made plans to meet Khanh around 10 to go out the jetty road but rescheduled to 1PM when the time came. My most exciting bird was the sapsucker, my first for Neah Bay, but we also managed to make the rounds of the rarities. Scott and Sierra were scanning the Warmhouse Beach from the side of the road as we drove by so we pulled over and I visited with Scott while Darchelle and Sierra tried again for photos of the Clay-colored Sparrow, again without success at least in Darchelle's case.
Our best bird of the day was the Rusty blackbird in the waterfront park across from our cabins but I failed to recognize it. Foraging with a couple of Red-winged Blackbirds around a puddle in the gravel parking area, it appeared to be black with a brown hood so I thought it might be a cowbird. It flew up into a little pine tree before I could get an adequate look and we did not wait for it to reappear. In our haste to move on, we missed our only opportunity of the weekend to find our own rare bird. Mason enjoyed that privilege instead when he identified it in the exact same spot a couple of hours later.
During our stroll out the jetty road with Khanh, Liam and Elizabeth we found no rare Eastern warblers or Asian vagrants but Darchelle did get a few photos of the locals. I think we celebrated with fish and chips jalapeno bites from Bigginz for dinner. We had to wait in line at the food truck because all the other birders in town had the same idea at the same time we did.
Sunday unveiled no new rarities but we did finally get good photos of the old ones. Driving by Warmhouse Beach again we noticed the posse of young paparazzi (Liam, Mason and Sierra) pursuing a hapless subject out in the grass We correctly assumed their target was the continuing Clay-colored Sparrow so Darchelle joined the chase. The little bird is looking a little scruffy, though not, I suspect, due to its popularity with the paparazzi but rather to its unfortunate choice of territory. If only we could have relocated it to Butler's feeders we would have, but we couldn't.
Out in the Wa'atch Valley Scott had reported that the Blue-gray Gnatcatcher had again been posing for photos right by the transfer station fence so we drove out there and this time I enjoyed great views out the driver's side window of the car while Darchelle took lots of photos. It was right where Scott had said. So was the Swamp Sparrow, 200 yards away at the edge of a little marsh along the Cape Flattery Road. Unfortunately (and typically) the sparrow was neither easy to see nor easy to photograph but Darchelle did succeed in getting a single shot of its "east end going west", as John used to say. The photo of the similiar Song Sparrow in the same position and location is provided for comparison.
Darchelle wanted to peruse the sparrow flock in the Hobuck Campground but when we could not find any sparrows on the grounds, she walked the beach instead. Ed and Delia had reported a Lark Sparrow out in the dune grass north of the campground and she thought maybe she would find that. I waited in the car and counted juncos flying from one spruce tree to another in the sunshine. There were 21 of them I think. Darchelle did not find the Lark Sparrow but photographed a Lincoln's Sparrow, a bird others report in the area but which we usually miss, in the willows along the beach.
Back in town the Rusty Blackbird was foraging in the bright sunshine in its spot in the little park. Although Darchelle got out and followed it around for a while, she got her best shots out the window of the car as we were preparing to head out of town.

11/16/2022   Packwood I  (link to here)
After two days at home we embarked at a comfortable hour on Wednesday morning for Packwood, home of The Mountain Goat Coffee Company + and a herd of elk which roams the town unfettered. Home also of a beleaguered handful of Spotted Owls +. Twelve years ago there were perhaps 60 pairs in the upper Cowlitz River drainage; twenty years before that there were at least 160 pairs. Now there are almost certainly fewer than ten, and those that remain are not talking much. Hoping nonetheless to hear from at least one of them, we drove forest roads above the valley but heard not a hoot, not even from one of the hundreds of Barred Owls which began breeding in the area 50 years ago and have since taken over nearly all of the Spotted Owl nesting sites. We stayed out until around 6:00PM, almost two hours after sunset, but the owls were no more talkative by night than by day.
Not wanting to drive home late we booked a room at the Crest Trail Lodge, the newish place on the west side of town where the fire alarm went off in the middle of the night the first time we stayed there. Writing this now, less than a week later, I remember neither the bed nor the toilet which probably means, for future reference, that they both worked for me.
Thursday morning in Packwood was windy, not good for listening for owls, so we picked up coffee and headed over the hill to Longmire. The first few miles of Skate Creek Road were a little unnerving with tree branches and even a few trees, fortunately already cleared, across the road but we had no problems. We also had no owls up at the entrance to the Westside Road. It was gated and we could have wheeled around the gate but I thought it felt too cold outside so we went home instead.
Meanwhile in an alarming indication of changing climate, Neah Bay is on fire. The fire broke out yesterday in clearcuts along the Cape Flattery Road out beyond Wa'atch Beach Drive and quickly flared up into the nearby forest driven by strong easterly winds, prompting evacuation of nearby residential areas. It is the first time a forest fire has managed to get started in Western Washington during the month of November.

11/18/2022   Phainopepla  (link to here)
Yesterday evening we had just crawled into bed after binging on season 1 of Sex and the City when Darchelle, checking her phone one last time, discovered that a very rare Phainopepla had been seen in the Columbia Gorge that morning, though the report + had apparently not been submitted until evening. It sounded credible and Liam, after a little research, vouched for the reliability of the reporter so by 9:15AM we were pulling out of the driveway for the four-hour drive to White Salmon. The weather was beautiful and the scenery would be nice too, even if we did not get the bird.
Which we did not, though we searched for about three hours around the neighborhood l+ in which the bird had been seen. We did find lots of other birds. The neighborhood hosted Mountain Ash and other fruiting trees along with some brushy habitat similar to the location in Sequim where a Phainopepla had turned up back in September 2018 l+, so even though the bird was flying east towards town when last seen, we did not attempt to search beyond the vicinity of the original report. We gave up around sunset and after a quick check for the Swamp Sparrow at Bingen Lake, drove home. Neither of us wanted to spend the night so without really discussing it, we both concluded that the chances of the bird ever turning up again were slim enough that we would risk repeating the long drive down to the gorge which, of course, we would have to do if someone did relocate it. Which they did not.
Perhaps the Phainopepla was never more than a Feignopepla, an imposter, a false alarm.

11/20/2022   Packwood II  (link to here)
The short version: Conditions were better but our results were the same as four days ago.

11/21/2022   Hooded Oriole #372  (link to here)
Yesterday morning as we were picking up coffee and pastries at the Mountain Goat Bakery, Darchelle's phone rang. I couldn't answer it but when she returned to the car we listened to the voicemail. We checked with Siri who informed us that Bay Center was 2 1/2 hours away. Not that it mattered; we were committed for the day but now we knew what we would be doing tomorrow, that is, today.
We spent the night at the Golden Lion Motel + in Raymond because it was cheaper than the alternative. Perhaps because of that, they were nearly full and the room (#9) they had available was nearly inaccessible but the manager/proprietor, an Asian woman around Darchelle's age but considerably shorter, helped her get me up our ramp and through the door. I was too tired to eat supper so we went to bed early. We slept well; I found the bed to be one of the most comfortable I have come across since losing the ability to roll over without help.
Morning dawned sunny and cool. We zipped over to Bay Center with high hopes which were promptly fulfilled, though the oriole was no longer at the house where we had seen it in January 2021. We pulled into the driveway of that house and talked with a couple of guys playing long-distance darts outside the travel trailer they apparently called home. Explaining that they were brothers, and cousins of the woman who lived at the home, they welcomed us to drive up the driveway and park near the feeders but they also said that they hadn't seen the bird yet this fall. We parked and peered around. No Trump signs anywhere. As Siri would put it, "Something went wrong!"
Darchelle looked up Liam's checklist + on her phone and discovered that the oriole had relocated, so we did too. The oriole had moved a quarter mile west across town to Fourth Ave between School and Park Streets, to a neighborhood where uneven lawns casually encroached on chip-sealed streets, to a small cream-colored house with precise pink trim and a big "Trump Won" banner hanging in the kitchen window, to a "chandelier of hummingbird feeders", as the homeowner put it, outside that Trump Won window. The homeowner, a grizzled and shirtless man my age named Rick, came out to greet us when he saw our car parked along the street just south of his driveway. "The oriole", he said, "arrived on the 14th, two weeks later than last year." He told me that it had been coming for three or four years now and showed up a little later every year. He did not know when it departed or where it went, though he said it occasionally disappeared for a week or two at a time. Rick had been a fisherman working up and down the coast from California to the Bering Sea but gave that up when the regulations became too restrictive. Now he worked at the boat yard part-time, helping out because the new kids didn't seem to know anything. "They've got technical knowledge but they don't know how to do anything" he explained. I didn't know what to say to that so Rick excused himself to go back inside to his coffee, telling me in parting to park anywhere we wanted because he'd be going out in a few minutes.
An hour later Rick was still there and so were we. The Hooded Oriole, an orange and black bird with bold white wingbars, beautiful in the sunlight, had visited the feeders half a dozen times and Darchelle had taken some nice photos. We were ready to move on but first I wanted Darchelle to go up to the front door and offer Rick $10 for sugar water, or coffee if he preferred. I wasn't sure he would accept it but he did, telling Darchelle that the sugar water costs him about a case of beer a week.
Total time required to add the Hooded Oriole to our year list: 5 hours.
We birded around town l+ for another hour or so, managing to accumulate a list of 30 species. Before leaving we swung back by Fourth Ave to say goodbye to the Hooded Oriole. It wasn't home, though Rick's van was still parked in the driveway.
Thinking we might be able to get photos of the Bar-tailed Godwit at Tokeland, we drove north again around the bay. The drive was 41 miles and took us nearly an hour though by boat, the Tokeland Marina would be only a little over five miles from the Bay Center Marina at least at high tide when water covers the intervening mudflats. The Bar-tailed Godwit was no longer hanging out with the Marbled Godwit flock at Tokeland l+; we knew that it had last been seen there about two weeks ago but had hoped we might get lucky.

11/24/2022   Thanksgiving   (link to here)
We celebrated yesterday with a extended family dinner hosted by Darchelle's folks. C made bread and each of the other kids made a pie. Berna and Clyde came with Skye, Heather and Katrina and Daniel, now a sophomore, brought several of his friends from school.
We did dinner on Wednesday so that Ben and Sally and family could do Thanksgiving dinner with his sister on Thursday.
Darchelle and I went birding all day Thursday, heading up into the hills to look for owls and woodpeckers and eventually hearing two distant but identifiable calls. Friday morning we explored a little more then spent a quiet afternoon and evening with Darchelle's folks again.
Sabbath we watched church online with Donna before joining Ben and Sally and family for a leisurely lunch at their house.

11/28/2022   Black-throated Green Warbler #374  (link to here)
The Black-throated Green Warbler which was discovered on Thanksgiving in Spokane's Riverfront Park gave us an occasion for thanks-giving this morning l+ when we spotted it with the help of Liam and Mason and Liam's aunt Chris in a snow-covered spruce tree. Actually I think it was a Ponderosa Pine tree but it did forage mostly in spruce trees during the hour or so that we watched it. I confess that I did not give thanks yesterday evening when Darchelle announced the discovery, having just been notified by Mason about the rare warbler which had just been reported on eBird. Year bird or not, I was not interested in spending the day driving to and from Spokane to look for a bird which had not been seen since four days earlier and which was almost certainly either dead or gone or both. Darchelle on the other hand was very interested in looking for it, particularly after talking with Liam and finding out that he wanted to join us. Not wanting to disappoint either of them, I agreed to go and once again, was glad I did.
Liam's aunt Chris drove him up from Olympia to meet us in North Band shortly before 7 AM, then joined us on the trip to Spokane. Once we arrived, she drove me around in the wheelchair in the snow while Darchelle, Liam and Mason attempted to get photos of the bird. She also drove both ways between Spokane and George, giving Darchelle some much-needed relief. Her company and our conversation made the time pass quickly on the long (though scenic) drive across the Columbia Basin. The scenery was particularly dramatic on the return trip, when windswept clouds were stretched across a bright blue sky above dry grassland golden in the afternoon sunlight. On the way out the sky was mostly overcast and spitting snow while we amused ourselves counting roadside raptors l+.
But about the warbler... Although it breeds in mixed coniferous forest in eastern British Columbia about 700 miles north of the border, this Black-throated Green Warbler is only the fourth one to turn up in Washington, and the first sighting in 17 years. Right now, it should be wintering in the forests of eastern Central America, having migrated southeast past the Great Lakes then southwest to the eastern edge of Mexico or across the Gulf to get there. The timing of their migration should ensure that they never encounter snow. This one did - last night - and is apparently surviving the experience by stuffing itself with Western Conifer Seed bugs, a fact (theory?) I learned from Mason via Maxine's checklist + the day after we saw the bird. We were relieved to learn that it survived the night when the temperature dropped to 10F, which is probably about 50° colder than evolution would lead this bird to expect this time of year.
On the way home we stopped at Getty's Cove l+ near Vantage. The clouds were tinged with pink and the birds, most of them anyhow, were settling down for the night. Once again Chris wheeled me around the park while Liam and Darchelle searched for birds. Once again Liam found about twice as many as I was able to spot on my own. Once again, I was just happy to be headed home having seen the bird that counted.
Total time devoted to adding the state's 4th Black-throated Green Warbler to our year list: 13 hours.

11/30/2022   November wrap-up  (link to here)
It was snowing when we woke up yesterday morning, our first snowfall of the fall. That melted by midday but it was snowing again when we went to bed, prompting the National Weather Service to issue a Winter Storm Warning for Ravenna. Darchelle put seed in the feeders and chickadees and juncos immediately showed up to eat it. Probably a few rats did too. We sat in the kitchen together and tried a new coffee, a Winter Blend from PCC which tasted toasty and smooth, quite good actually, better via Drip than French Press but then what coffee isn't?
Today is Wednesday, often the first day of our birdwatching week but today Darchelle has a couple of appointments so I anticipate enjoying some computer time and an opportunity to look back on the month. We spent 10 nights out of town (5 of them at Neah Bay) and 15 days in the field, putting 4200 miles on the car while listening to only 1 1/2 Louise Penny novels. Seven new birds showed up in the state during the month, and of the five which were verified, we saw three giving us a total of 375 for the year. Incredibly, that puts us within four species of exceeding the record of 378 set last year by Will B. Our (complete) checklist total is 571, challenging us to add at least 29 more checklists during the more than 25 days in December in which we could potentially search for those last few year birds.

12/02/2022   Eastern Bluebird #375  (link to here)
Yesterday evening around 8:30 Darchelle received texts in quick succession from Mason and Liam notifying us that an Eastern Bluebird had been reported in a park along the Columbia River in Kennewick. It was not on our list of possibilities because it was a new bird for Washington, the first one since the Common Crane back in May 2021. Of course we would have to chase it, along with all the other birdwatchers who keep a Washington state list. It would be quite a party.
Fortunately the pass was clear. The trees were blanketed with snow from a storm two nights ago but the roadway was bare and damp. In Ellensburg freezing fog overnight had lifted by the time we passed through leaving all the cottonwoods, especially along the river, white with frost. At Sentinel Gap an inch of fresh snow traced the aprons of talus and pale yellow grass descending from the cliffs above the river. On the Handford reservation a line of stratus hugged the hills to the west separating blue ridges from hazy slopes and snow-covered plains, a bright landscape in hues of lavender and ocher washed with white. The entire trip was a gallery of landscapes begging to be photographed or painted, but we were in pursuit of a bird. Next year we will stop and photograph landscapes.
When we drove into the parking lot at Leslie Groves Park l+ the thermometer read 25F but the ground was bare. A paved trail led south along the river past a couple of tennis courts; beyond them we could see a few people standing around, birdwatchers no doubt, attracted by the bluebird which in turn was attracted by Virginia Creeper berries in the trees and bushes down by the water. We hoped it was still there. Andy and Ellen had arrived a half-hour ahead of us but we had not yet heard from them regarding the bird.
Darchelle bundled me up in the wheelchair - down parka, insulated pants, fleece buff, wool hat, wool socks, down comforter and a heavy wool blanket on top of everything else - and we wheeled anxiously down the trail. The bird was gone, we learned as we approached Andy and Ellen and the others. It had been there recently but had flown out to an island in the river, from which it would probably soon return, we were assured. And so it did, flying with its Mountain Bluebird companion into the tree right next to where I was parked in the chair. Both birds then flew down to a bush at eye-level to pluck and eat Virginia Creeper berries. The birds came and went over the next hour and a half, returning several times for more berries. Darchelle got good photos and I got good views. I also got very cold.
We drove around for an hour with the heat on full-blast, stopping only to pee in a parking lot with more traffic than we anticipated. Eventually we found the Caterpillar Café +, leaving the car running with the heat on while Darchelle went in to order coffee and food:, which we then consumed in front of the café in the car with the engine running and the heat on. By the time we left for College Place, I was warm again.
Richard and Donna were home and delighted to welcome us for the night. We tried to stay up talking but by 10 PM I was wiped out, perhaps in consequence of getting so chilled. In the morning we stayed for breakfast then headed home. Passing through Richland, we considered stopping to join the party at the bluebird but were not feeling sufficiently social so we kept going.
Total time for the bluebird, about 8 hours.

12/03/2022   Exotics  (link to here)
Three days, three exotics. We reported two of them on eBird, increasing our year total by two so that as of 12/5, the Top 100 list showed our total as 378, tying the year list record set last year by Will B, though as noted earlier, the official list includes only native and naturalized species so we remain two behind Will. Nonetheless we have over the past couple of weeks discussed augmenting our list with a few exotics but we did not anticipate encountering them so quickly.
The first one, the Graylag Goose, we initially added to our list with the bluebirds but then decided that it was probably a domestic hybrid so we removed it again, not an easy task via the phone app as it turned out. We spent at least half an hour outside the Caterpillar Café trying to get rid of that Graylag Goose before anyone could spot it in our checklist.
We were more intentional about the Muscovy Duck. On our way home we detoured over to the slough along West Snoqualmie Valley Road l+ in Fall City where we had seen one last year. This time Darchelle spotted two of them almost hidden in the grass along the near shore of the slough. They looked quite at home and we did not hesitate to count them. Total time to do that, about 2 hours. Hoping to make it less obvious that the exotics were in fact our primary objective, we supplemented our checklist with a crowd of sparrows at a nearby feeder, a spot worth revisiting before the end of the year in case a vagrant bunting joins the sparrow flock.
The third exotic, Helmeted Guineafowl, was among those we least expected to find but at a farm along Brady Loop Road l+ we came across a small flock of them. They were obviously domestic but they were foraging just outside their fenced yard so we counted them. That took no more than 0.5 hours. Now we just need a real bird to show up so we can obscure the fact that we have been shamelessly padding our list with exotics.

12/04/2022   Copalis Beach  (link to here)
Three years ago, a Mountain Plover was discovered at the mouth of Connor Creek at the north end of Copalis Beach in Griffiths Priday State Park. The aphorism "Lightning never strikes the same place twice" is demonstrably false but today we found it to be true in the case of vagrant Mountain Plovers, or at least it was probably true. We don't actually know for sure because we did not have time to get out of the car and wheel the last 300 yards of the beach, on which vehicles are not allowed, to reach the mouth of the creek. We were pleased though to discover that we were permitted to drive the beach as far as we did, which was at least 250 yards beyond where the trail accesses the beach m+ from Heath Road via a bridge over the creek.
We accessed Copalis Beach l+ from Second Ave in Ocean City, three miles to the south, and drove north along the water on hard-packed sand counting birds. The tide was low and the wet sand was pockmarked with pimples of sand presumably pushed up by subsurface sand-dwellers. Although we did not find a Mountain Plover, we did find 17 Snowy Plovers, many more than we expected, along with lots of Sanderlings, a handful of Black-bellied Plovers and five regal Bald Eagles. Actually only one was regal and that only at a distance; the others mostly looked dumpy.
We drove the beach back down to Ocean Shores, picked up supper at Bennett's Fish Shack then drove north with our fried oysters and veggie wrap to the Forks Motel where the bed was comfortable, the toilet both tall and accessible and the off-season price just $99.

12/05/2022   Neah Bay VIII  (link to here)
We left Forks at sunrise and began searching Neah Bay l+ shortly before 9, starting at the greenhouses at the east edge of town and working our way west along the waterfront, hoping to come up with a rare bird. Other than a merely uncommon White-throated Sparrow at Butler's feeders, we did not succeed in our quest though we got a little excited whe&n off the bat when we heard an unfamiliar warbling call from a bird flying overhead. Darchelle caught a glimpse of it and thought it looked gray and a little smaller than a Robin but we could not relocate it, though she did get a brief recording of the call. After some deliberation I concluded that it was probably a Mountain Bluebird but Darchelle had her doubts. Later, as we were leaving town, it occurred to me that it might have been a Purple Finch. Assuming Merlin could tell us for sure, Darchelle downloaded the app and we tried it out. At first Merlin could find no match but then it suggested Purple Finch, so we listened to calls on the phone and they matched pretty well.
After spending too much time looking for the Bluebird in Ba'adah Village we continued on to Warmhouse where Darchelle walked the beach and photographed gulls. Many of them were Glaucous-winged and most of the others appeared to have a Glaucous-winged parent in their past, but my IDs of the photos above are unfortunately tentative. We picked up the pace after that; bird numbers both in town and on the bay seemed lower than last month. When we reached the jetty road we found the gate wide open so of course we drove out there but neither heard nor saw any birds other than a Kingfisher.
Well after noon we took a break and picked up a breakfast sandwich for lunch from Native Grounds Espresso. Darchelle ordered the vegetarian breakfast wrap with scrambled eggs; they forgot the wrap but the eggs and fried vegetables were delicious. Fortified with food we drove out to the Wa'atch River Valley l+ where the Swamp Sparrow continues but the gnatcatcher apparently does not.
Before heading home we stopped at Butler's Motel l+ to watch the feeders for a bit. Darchelle spotted the White-throated Sparrow right away. It is apparently a juvenile by the streaks on the flanks, a different bird from the one we found at Raven's Corner a month ago. Nancy had not noticed the sparrow but she told us that she had not seen the raccoons for several weeks. Maybe they hibernate.
We left Butler's at 4:30, drove at a comfortable pace, waited 10 minutes for the ferry and got home at 8:30.

12/11/2022   Brambling #376  (link to here)
This vagrant finch from Siberia was reported on Friday afternoon from Port Angeles along with a photo showing it foraging in a lawn at 1110 E 3rd St m+. The 6:10 AM ferry Saturday morning would get us to Port Angeles by 8:00 but we decided that the 7:10 AM ferry would be early enough. It wasn't. The Brambling returned to the feeders around 8:20 AM but left by 8:40, 10 minutes before we showed up. Elizabeth and Liam arrived about five minutes after we did and he relocated it, twice - initially in a tree half a block away and later in a yard about two blocks away. Both times he got a photo. Maxine saw it too, though only in flight. We never did; we pursued those and other sightings as people reported them but were never quite quick enough. After making a final brief appearance around 1:00 PM, the Brambling was not seen again for the rest of the day. After a long cold vigil, we gave up on it around 4:30 PM. We had little hope that we would find the bird the next morning but to admit defeat and go home would have been too painful so we spent Saturday night at the Olympic View Inn +. I recalled it as being a little nicer than the other places we frequent in Sequim and after a disappointing day, the prospect of a cheap motel was just a little too much. We could also have stayed in Port Angeles just a few blocks from the bird but I hoped that the 20 minute drive back to Sequim would help me get warmed up. It did, both then and in the morning.
This time, we were watching the feeders at 1110 E 3rd by 7:30 AM. This time, the bird did not show up at 8:20 AM or any other time all day long, despite Cassidy's liberal offering of birdseed. It was Warren H who finally found it around noon flying across E 2nd St at approximately the same location at which it had last been seen 23 hours earlier. After verifying the ID and taking a few photos, Warren and Katie raced around the neighborhood notifying all the other birdwatchers. When Darchelle received Katie's text we were parked on the sidewalk watching the feeders. We immediately wheeled over to 2nd Street trying not to get our hopes up too much. Andy and Ellen, and Marcus R, Heather B and Wayne S, friends from Tacoma, were already there along with Warren and Katie and they had all just watched the bird fly into a dense column of English Ivy across the street and disappear.
After a tense couple of minutes (at least for Darchelle and me), the bird emerged and flew back to a Japanese Maple on our side of the street where Ellen photographed it while we watched it. Without optics I was able to spot it in the tree and just barely pick out the field marks - orange body, gray head, white belly, black on the wings. In our haste to come see the bird, Darchelle had left the camera in the car so she went to get it but by the time she returned, the bird was gone. Ellen and Warren graciously agreed to share their photos with us.
With the bird gone, the party dispersed. We circulated around the neighborhood hoping to get a photo but did not see the Brambling again, though others did soon after we left. The next day it spent a solid half-hour in the Japanese Maple, where it presumably felt at home since the trees (actually multiple species) are widespread along the western shore of the Pacific where Siberian Bramblings normally winter. It also made repeated visits to 1110 E 3rd Street.
Altogether in pursuit of the Brambling we spent about 20 hours, about 15 hours more than we would have spent had we caught that 6:10 AM ferry.

12/13/2022   2023 Calendar  (link to here)
Back home in Seattle, I spent most of the last two days assembling the 2023 Washington Nature Calendar +. Producing a calendar composed of photos Darchelle and I have taken has been an annual effort for the past seven years. Although not true every year, this year every photo in the calendar is from Washington, taken by Darchelle during the past year. Each calendar page covers one month and has two photos, one featured on top and the other in the background behind the dates. Below are the photos in order by calendar page along with a brief discussion of each one.
The frosty valley of Mary Ann Creek in the open highlands of Okanogan County during our mid-January trip to look for grouse and owls offered better scenery than birding but we were delighted to bring home these landscape images. We did well with grouse too, except for Ruffed, but fog obscured the Snowy Owls we had hoped to see.
The Common Grackle which turned up at Vic H's feeders in Pasco in early February was a new bird for us in the state so of course we immediately went to see it. It posed nicely for photos and seemed quite happy in the neighborhood but unfortunately made it only a few days before it was killed and eaten by a Sharp-shinned Hawk. Darchelle lobbied for inclusion of its photo in the calendar and I agree, it is a nice one.
The photo of Rock Sandpipers and Black Turnstones, collectively known, along with Surfbirds and Wandering Tattlers, as "Rockpipers", was taken in late January during a trip specifically to find them but because it is one of my favorite photos from the whole year and because the Rockpipers can be found as easily in March as earlier in the year, I put it in for that month. Darchelle asked me why I like that photo so much and I couldn't really say; I just do. Being out on the beach at the edge of the jetty with those birds as they foraged among the rocks exposed by the ebbing tide was one of the highlights of our year, so maybe that is why.
The flower photos were taken in our front yard in April but neither the Merganser nor the Yellow Warbler was photographed during the month for which it is featured. The warbler was our first Yellow Warbler of the year; we visited Nisqually NWR at the end of April specifically to find that bird after Liam reported it there. They nest in June throughout the state so are appropriately situated in the calendar. The male Hooded Merganser photographed displaying for a female in late March would probably not still be doing that in May; they lose interest in female Hooded Mergansers about the time the females start incubating, which in Washington would probably be around the beginning of April.
Although the sunset in the calendar for the month of July is not particularly impressive, it marked the conclusion of a memorable June evening in the Okanogan Highlands during which I doubled the number of Snowshoe Hares I had seen up until that point in Washington. Darchelle appealed to me to feature the hare in the calendar but I did not think our hare photos sufficiently appealing. The Great Gray Owl represents another memorable evening, this time in the Blue Mountains in May. Wrong month, I know, but the Great Gray Owl would look much like this in August as well. Darchelle photographed the Laysan Albatross during our one pelagic birding trip in early September, of which it was one of the highlights.
The caption on your calendar (if you have one; if you do not, you can order one here + though please note that the quality is not as good as I would have liked) for the month of September may indicate that the photo of driftwood with a Savannah Sparrow was taken at Discovery Park in Seattle. It was not; Darchelle took that photo and others during our search for a Sharp-tailed Sandpiper in September. The photo of the Bald Eagle she took in December though I'm sure the same bird was in the same area during November too. We had driven down to the Ocean Shores area in the hopes of finding our own rare bird, maybe a goose from Asia or a Mountain Plover from wherever the last one we saw on Copalis Beach came from. Driving out on the beach (an activity I particularly appreciate since becoming wheelchair-bound), we inspected quite a few Snowy Plovers and Sanderlings and photographed several Bald Eagles but spotted nothing rare. Someone else found the rare bird featured for the month of December, the state's first Eastern Bluebird. We turned up in Richland the day after the bluebird did and it was still there. It stuck around for almost two weeks during which time at least 100 Washington state birdwatchers went to see it.

12/15/2022   Packwood IV  (link to here)
I've always known I have a bit of the gambler in me, and apparently so does Darchelle because today we drove back down to Packwood again anticipating that this time, we would for sure win the lottery and see, or at least hear, a Spotted Owl. Well, we didn't.
Today pushed the total time we have spent this fall searching for a Spotted Owl up to about 50 hours. Even Darchelle is beginning to think that might be enough.

12/20/2022   Neah Bay IX  (link to here)
We spent two full days out there this time, helping out with the Tuesday Christmas Bird Count which unfortunately coincided with the biggest snowstorm of the past decade at Neah Bay. The storm moved in from the east and caught up to us on Monday afternoon while we were parked in front of the Brambling yard l+ in Port Angeles, having made the short detour off Hwy 101 hoping we might get lucky and get our own photo of the elusive bird. We did; the Brambling visited the feeders twice during the 45 minutes we watched the yard. We were grateful for the photos; the bird had not been reported for several days and we were not sure it was even still around. By the time we left the light was fading and the snow was accumulating but though we followed the storm the rest of the way out to Neah Bay, we never had to deal with more than about a half-inch on the road.
We, and the birds, had to deal with considerably more than that the next morning. Hobuck Beach, where we were staying in the accessible cabin (#22), received about four inches capped with a breakable crust of sleet and ice but in town about 10 inches of snow fell overnight, inspiring enough owners of four-wheel-drive pickup trucks and SUVs to get out there and make tracks that the roads were pretty well packed by the time the birdwatchers began their work. Well, these birdwatchers anyhow.
Having not officially signed up to participate in the Christmas count, and given the number of more capable (and able) birders who had signed up, we felt that our contributions would be redundant but because of the storm some people weren't able to make it and we ended up reporting one or two species which no one else came across on count day. That was nice. On the other hand no new state year birds were found either. Elizabeth spotted a Brambling which in a typical year would have been new but today it was not even the only one in town. Darchelle noticed a Nashville warbler at Butler's on Wednesday which no one else had seen; it might have been the rarest bird reported over the two days we were out there. we accumulated a list of 59 species +; I assume the count total was considerably higher but I don't know what it was.
Birds were much more visible around town on Wednesday morning, which is when Darchelle took most of her photos. Varied Thrushes, Oregon Juncos and other sparrows were foraging on top of the crusty snow wherever roads were bordered by forests. Ducks and Gulls on the other hand were relatively scarce, though perhaps we just didn't pay much attention to them.
We birded until sunset, left town shortly after 4 PM and returned home about 10:30 PM.

12/25/2022   Christmas  (link to here)
After a couple of cold days the weather moderated yesterday and rain melted all the snow. Still hoping for one more year bird to break the record, we drove out to the Snoqualmie Valley l+ but found nothing more unusual than a White-throated Sparrow. We have been avoiding social commitments for the past couple of weeks, including today, in order to be free to chase a year bird should one show up but no new birds have been found the state since the Brambling two weeks ago.

12/28/2022   Neah Bay X  (link to here)
The snow from a week ago was gone. So were the birdwatchers. We returned to Neah Bay hoping to stumble across one last bird for our big year but we found only the usual suspects in three days of searching town, bay and environs. Nothing new turned up anywhere else in the state either so we didn't miss anything. We could have stayed home, but then we would have wondered what we had missed by not being out at Neah Bay.
We paid particular attention to two areas - Butler's feeders, because that is where we believed a new bird would be most likely to show up, and the Jetty Road, because the gate was open. At Butler's the overall number of birds was down, mostly because the sparrows which had converged on the feeders during the snowstorm had dispersed again, but the few unusual birds - the Brewer's Blackbird, the Mourning Dove and the White-throated Sparrow (though not the Nashville Warbler) - were still present. We could not find either of the Bramblings, nor any Swamp Sparrows, and most of the Varied Thrushes had melted back into the woods. Or died.
Out at the base of the jetty we were glad to discover that the Orange-crowned Warbler had made it through the cold spell. While Darchelle searched around for other birds I sat in the car and perused the small flock of hatch-year gulls which had gathered around some discarded dead salmon. I was pretty sure that one or two of them were Thayer's while the others were either Glaucous-winged or Western X Glaucous-winged. Later, studying photos, I was able to confirm my suspicions. On Glaucous-winged and hybrids, the shades of brown on the primaries, the tertials, the scapulars and wing coverts are all about the same, pale on the Glaucous-winged and darker on the hybrids, but uniform nonetheless. On Thayer's, the brown is darkest on the primaries, paler on the tertials and paler yet on the rest of the folded wing. In flight, the outer primaries are distinctly two-toned while on the inner primaries, the outer web shows a pale mirror and the inner web is pale all the way to the tip. Good to know. BTW, this website + was very helpful for deciphering HY gulls.
We drove out to Forks late Tuesday afternoon. I think we finished up our 14th Louise Penny novel, Kingdom of the Blind, on the way. Darchelle did not work the last two weeks of the year so we considered leaving a day or two earlier but deferred our departure, concerned about the possibility of landslides due to the combination of rain and snowmelt. Wednesday morning we birded La Push l+ but found nothing noteworthy. We stayed at Butler's in Neah Bay on Wednesday and Thursday nights and surveyed town and bay pretty thoroughly from Wednesday afternoon to midday Friday. The weather was cool and damp but our motel room was reasonably comfortable once we got it warmed up.
Other than our feeder watch at Butler's l+ on Friday morning, I sat in the car while Darchelle got out, looked for birds and tried for photos. I had begun work on our annotated big year list + and had realized that we were missing photos for a fair number of the birds that we had seen so we made it a point to get photos of some of those birds. Thursday afternoon around the town and bay l+ was our best list but my favorite day was Friday because we were heading home.

12/31/2022   Fir Island and the Year  (link to here)
We concluded the year the same way we commenced it - by searching Fir Island for a rare bird. Back in January it was a large falcon that we sought but failed to find (until early March). Today we had no trouble finding the Bewick's Tundra Swan at its customary location at Moore and Best Roads l+. Although a new bird for us, it is not considered a separate species so did not add to our year list.