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Published: January 3rd 2008
Cattle Point
Looking east at Cattle point on a blustery and beautiful winter day.Welcome to the new year! For me, it is the Year of the Corvid, as that was the first type of bird I saw this morning (too brief a glimpse from a moving car of a distant bird to determine Northwestern Crow or Common Raven). First positively identified bird was a female Bufflehead, but “Year of the Bufflehead” sounds kind of ridiculous. Corvid is legit.
A delayed trip to Kenya allowed for an opportunity to spend New Year's with friends on San Juan Island (as opposed to by myself on a plane somewhere above the North Pole). In stark (and somewhat welcome) contrast to last year's debauchery in Mexico ("when in Mexico, do as the Mexicans do" . . . and drink lots of tequila), I actually ended up sleeping through the New Year last night . . . I simply could not keep my eyes open after the long day yesterday. I passed out at about 23h51 watching Planet Earth, only to wake up 12 minutes later and head to bed. Oh, well! A good night’s sleep provided me with the opportunity to go birding (sans the post-New Year’s hangover the majority of the world probably has) pretty much
Harlequin Duck
A photo that does no justice of this impressive male Harlequin Duck in Griffin Bay all day! Definitely a good way to start the year.
Blake, Margo, and I drove north from Friday Harbor to pick up Aileen. A trip to the south end of the island (via False Bay and a couple ponds dotted with swans) yielded lots of good waterbirds, primarily ducks but also some grebes and loons at Third Lagoon. Highlights included all three mergansers, Trumpeter Swans, close-up Harlequin Ducks, Northern Pintail, and several Bald Eagles. We spent a lot of time at Third Lagoon honing our skills and identifying winter waterbirds. Trading bins with Blake for the day helped him out a lot - amazing what a difference a nice set of bins makes (well worth the investment!).
Cattle Point Lighthouse was as picturesque as ever with panoramic views of the Cascade Mountains and Mt. Rainier, but particularly the closer Olympic Mountains. Golden clouds over the snow-capped Olympics across a blustery and white-capped Haro Straight was a sight to behold. We took off into the dunes above South Beach hoping for larks or longspurs, but no such luck. We did, however, find some .50-caliber muzzle-loader bullets, presumably from the Pig War. Blake also found some sort of spherical shot
Duning
Aileen, Margo, and Blake scouring the dunes for non-existent birds (but finding cool Pig War artifacts) that appeared to be of the same caliber. Pretty cool to find pieces of history like that; I have to wonder what the story is behind the particular ammunition we stumbled across.
After a filling lunch of those famous turkey clubs at the Dr.’s Office, we dropped Aileen off at home before continuing on to find a rumored cave in the middle of the island. I’m going to spare the details of how we got there since it’s somewhat secret (kind of), but we eventually found it and enjoyed a little spelunking (about 75 crouched-over feet of spelunking, anyway). The cave is located amidst an old limestone quarry, but is unusual in that it's natural. It’s more of a narrow subterranean tunnel, but a cave nonetheless and definitely a sweet hide-out that gets very little human traffic. Well worth the bushwhack and a cool find.
16h15 ferry back to the mainland. Too short a stay for my taste, but glad I had the opportunity nevertheless.
NPR report of Kenya claims difficulty in determining if things are getting worse or better in Kenya. Hope for better.
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Colleen
non-member comment
hat
Hey Blake, that is one of THE best looking hats! Who is the cute girl with you?