Western Washington rarities continue!

Last night, Clara got home from teaching swimming, and her, Devin and I had a mad good stir fry that Devin had made. Then we played some music, and went to bed pretty early because we all had an early morning to prepare for.

I got up at about 7am, which I was surprised that I was surprised that it is still moderately dark. I met up with a volunteer group from the Tahoma Audubon Society who were helping with a survey of the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge. Our task was to write down every bird we saw, in 200 meter quadrants, within all of the refuge. FWS was looking for research on how he current restoration of the property was effecting birds, particularly shorebirds and waterfowl. It was very cold, but our group saw some decent stuff in the riparian areas and sloughs. RUBY and GOLDEN-CROWNED KINGLETS, CEDAR WAXWINGS, WINTER WREN, BEWICK'S WREN, and LINCOLN'S SPARROW were some of the notables.


When we were done at about 11:30, I drove up to a Tacoma marina to join the local, regional, and national birders who had "flocked" to get a glimpse of the seldom-seen in North America, BLACK-TAILED GULL. I found the extremely small flock of 3 birders at a pull-out on Marina Drive. All over the docks were BONAPARTE'S GULL and CALIFORNIA GULL, and I took the time to notice a HORNED GREBE. One of the people was my age, and he had relocated what he thought may be the gull using another person's scope. It was tough to see, as it was sleeping and tucking it's head in it's side. We got to talking after he was showing me how to identify the WESTERN/GLAUCOUS-WINGED GULL hybrid. He said he was from Salt Lake City, and as it turned out, he is a very good friend of the two guys, Jeff and Carl, that I had birded with in SLC. His name is Colby, and within a couple minutes, he was proved right, as the BLACK-TAILED GULL had given us plenty of authoritive looks.