Today was just a terrific day from start to finish. Kay and I drove to Gig Harbor to meet Ken and Rachel at Schmel Homestead Park to have a picnic breakfast and watch the eclipse. Kay and I brought vegan coffee cake, and Ken and Rachel brought fresh berries. Ken also brought toys and ideas on ways to experience the eclipse. He had figured out how to use his spotting scope to focus in the sun onto a notebook to show the sun without looking at it.
This worked great during the eclipse when it got near fully covered by the moon, but at other times it simply started to incinerate whatever it was focused on. A 9 year old at the park had fun burning the moon-shaped eclipse onto a 2×4. Ken also brought metal colanders as a way to see the sun focused on a paper.
It was cool too, but we had more fun pretending to be fending off aliens with the colanders on our heads. We sat, told stories, ate, chatted with a young father and his son, eating, and watching the eclipse happen.
After this I brought Kay home, and while she went to dinner with friends I went to Brett’s house after picking up some lumber at Home Depot, and put up the high trim on the side of the house that needs a gutter, started to find level spots for the shed, and then had dinner and watched the M’s with a beer at the Top of Tacoma bar in his neighborhood.
On the way home I birded 56th St. Stormwater, the Black phoebe is still there,
Levy Pond, and the Freeman Rd Mitigation where the adult Pectoral Sandpiper remains with 16 WESA.
Home just in time to watch the bottom of the 9th inning of the M’s win as Diaz got the save without too much drama.
Tag: Black phoebe
A Day in Thurston and Pierce: Black Phoebe and Eurasian Green-winged Teal
Today Ken was finally feeling well enough to get out birding, and we met at 7AM at the I-5 / HWY 512 Park and Ride to try to track down some local eBird rarities and fill out our state and Pierce County year lists.
First stop was the American Lake Camp Murray Boat Launch where we saw three Canvasback that were WA FOY for Ken. Also had at least 120 Tree Swallows streaming across the water. Could not make any other species of swallows.
Next stop was Easterday Road trying for WTSP, not to be. Next was the Mount’s Road Tribal Turnout area where I located a Northern Shrike, we had a FOY Pierce County Sharp-shinned hawk for me, and we headed for Nisqually to look for the wintering RSHA.
No luck there with the hawk, but we did meet Brian Pendleton, and it was nice to see him again and bird there together. I got a FOY Red-breasted Sapsucker just before we headed back for the car, but no RSHA despite nearly 2 hours of searching.
From here we continued south a couple of miles to the Hawk’s Prairie Settling Ponds where a Black phoebe was calling loudly enough that we got on it immediately and spent a bit of time birding that area.
We spent so much time at Nisqually that we decided against treking to Longview to look for the NOMO there, and instead headed for Gog-li-hi-ti to look for the SBGU wintering there. On the way we detoured to Orting where we got Ken the wintering Trumpeter Swans (FOY for him) and made a quick stop at the Fife Levy Pone on the way to Gog-li-hi-ti.
At G-T-H-T and the 11th street bridge Gull bathing spot we had no luck looking for the SBGU, but we did find the Eurasian Green-winged teal that was located there over the weekend.
Last stop of the day was at Ruston Way where I was able to drive us straight to the location I had recently seen the immature Snow Goose and Ken added it to his year list.
We also saw a close in Pelagic Cormorant that was starting to get it’s breeding red face.
I got two WA FOY birds (RBSA and BLPH), one ABA FOY Bird (RBSA) and 8 Pierce FOY birds, DOWO, BUSH, YRWA, WEME, SSHA, BEWR, PISI, and TRSW. Ken added several FOY WA birds too.
Sunshine, birding with a great friend, and a day of total leisure. Life is good.