Come As You Are

Last night, I went over to where Clara was staying, at her friend who had just given birth's house. Clara was supposed to have been there for the birth, but it happened super-early on Monday (2am-5am) and Clara missed the call. Regardless, she was to be over there for 24 hours to help her with anything she needed. We watched Year One, which was as horrendous a movie as it looks.


This morning I shoved off to Hoquiam, by way of Kurt Cobain's hometown of Aberdeen. I was in search of a few birds that had the "Patagonia rest area effect" going on. That's when a rare bird is spotted and reported, good birders show up to see it, and subsequently more good birds are reported. This was a trilogy of local rarities that included ORCHARD ORIOLE, CLAY-COLORED SPARROW, and CHESTNUT-COLLARED LONGSPUR.

When I first got to the wastewater treatment facility these were reported at, I didn't see any birders, so I too the time to tease out a MEW GULL from the close by feeding gulls. I then noticed some binoculized people, so I herded up with them. They were in the spot that the first two birds I mentioned were recently seen. Within 5 minutes, the CLAY-COLORED SPARROW appeared.


Since I have seen an ORCHARD ORIOLE before, I got the directions of a short walk down the road, where some birders had already rediscovered the CHESTNUT-COLLARED LONGSPUR, which was partially in breeding plumage. I got some excellent looks of it. I also talked to a local birder a bit about some other spots where rarities had been seen recently. He gave me directions to Tokeland, which was about a half-hour drive away.


When I got to the Tokeland docks, I found the pack of roughly 100 MARBLED GODWIT and WILLET that I was looking for, but was unable to track down the stray BAR-TAILED GODWIT that had been seen about 3 days ago. On the drive back, I stopped at Grayland Beach and Bottle Beach, with no spectacular sitings.