Category: Birds

Eagles in Skagit County, December 2020

On By flyingsquidwithgogglesIn Birds, Wildlife
Two juvenile Bald Eagles chasing Dunlin

Skagit County is a great place in Western Washington to look for eagles. I usually do a boat trip on the Nooksack River this time of year for good looks at hundreds of Bald Eagles, but those aren’t running this year because of the pandemic, so I took a drive up instead.

Rather than the hundreds of eagles on the Nooksack, I was able to see about half-a-dozen near the Skagit River up in the mountains (it has better road access than the Nooksack, where the road only comes close to the river in a few places.) In the afternoon, I headed down from the mountains to the flat part of Skagit County, where the Skagit and other rivers empty into the Salish Sea, and there I was able to find a few dozen eagles. Two were young eagles (that’s why they don’t yet have the white head and tail of the adult Bald,) trying to catch some Dunlin on a farm pond near Bow, WA.

Undeterred by the fact that they weren’t catching anything, the juvie eagles tussled with each other a little

In addition to the young eagles trying things out, there were a couple Peregrine Falcons taking turns diving on the same Dunlin flock. They didn’t catch anything either. They did have speed on their side, and that made it hard to photograph them.

One of the Peregrines hunting Dunlin – speed makes them hard to photograph

Southeast Alaska: Day 4, The Bay of Pillars

On By flyingsquidwithgogglesIn Birds, Otters, Wildlife

The Bay of Pillars is a gorgeous spot with some of the cutest wildlife we could possibly find on the whole trip, maybe even in the whole state of Alaska:

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A Sea Otter (Enhydra lutris) pup watches us from mom’s back, while she’s just busy swimming. I can imagine how tired she gets as the pup gets closer and closer to her in size.

It doesn’t take very many otters to provide an overload in the cute department, and the Bay of Pillars provided them. The calm, flat waters of the bay gave us plenty of opportunity to view several pairs of otters, and the occasional lone animal. In fact, it was so glassy flat that I could even get photos of sea jellies from the ship’s deck:

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An Egg Yolk Sea Jelly (Phacellophora camtschatica) floating placidly in the Bay of Pillars.

As the ship anchored, the Sea Otters moved off into the small channels and coves off the edges of the bay. Probably the best for them even if it wasn’t the greatest for our views of them, the otters have no way of knowing this huge hulking ship with its rattling anchor wouldn’t mean them any harm. We did get to explore the Bay of Pillars by kayak, which is the best way I could imagine exploring the bay, with all of its shallow offshoots and branches.

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Kayaks lined up for exploring the Bay of Pillars, AK.

I usually try for photos of wildlife, but the snaking line of kayaks stretched out behind the Sea Lion was too much for me to miss. I thought it made a pretty shot.

From the kayaks, we found more Bald Eagles, Spotted Sanpipers, sea otters, and even a little family of Common Mergansers:

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Momma Merganser’s going to be really mad when she realizes the kids have been sneaking out to play in kayak traffic.

Even though the kayaking ended in a little sprinkling rain, you don’t go kayaking without expecting to get a bit damp. The Bay of Pillars really left an impression on me as a gorgeous and pristine bit of wilderness, the perfect place to get away from it all… except the birds. There’s no getting away from the birds there.

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A Google Maps map of the trip so far, with major stops or sightings marked.

Southeast Alaska, Day 1: Juneau, AK

On By flyingsquidwithgogglesIn Birds, Wildlife

The greatest and strangest things to see in the world all have to start somewhere, and my most recent trip to Alaska had some of the best wildlife viewing I’ve had in my life.

For this trip that start was Juneau. Although it’s a small town (only about 30,000 people,) Juneau gets a lot of visitors in the summertime. That made our stop in Juneau as we prepared to cruise on the Motor Vessel National Geographic Sea Lion through Southeast Alaska feel a lot more crowded than the rest of the trip. I shouldn’t knock Juneau for its crowds during the summer – people come there for a reason, and it’s not just Juneau’s convenient location (not entirely serious there – I don’t really think of Juneau as being particularly convenient.)

Juneau does have the Mendenhall Glacier nearby, and a variety of eagles and other critters worth watching, both those that are easy to find in the lower 48, and those that are hard to find. I had a lot of trouble getting good shots of Mendenhall Glacier and its associated waterfalls and icebergs because of the crowds; after all, Juneau is a major cruise ship port, and in addition to our 60-passenger ship there were two of the 1,000+ passenger ships dwarfing ours in the port. Instead, just off the beaten path to the glacier there was a smaller, quieter, and almost empty path that ran closer to the water and was well worth taking.

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A Spotted Sandpiper (Actitis macularis) on the riverbed downstream from Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau, AK

There we found some quiet, and the good views of a Spotted Sandpiper shown. Not an unusual or rare bird, especially for Alaska, but it was nice to find some nature in amongst the mass of people making their pilgrimage to Mendenhall.

Also, even the cruise ship dock itself gave up some natural beauty. The bald eagle pictured was no more than 50 yards from the Sea Lion tied up just down the dock. Cities don’t give up their natural beauty easily, but Juneau has more than most, and it didn’t take a long time or much travel to find it.

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A Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leaucocephalus) overlooking the pier where the M/V National Geographic Sea Lion was docked on July 31, 2016, Juneau, AK.

American Bittern

On By flyingsquidwithgogglesIn Birds, Wildlife

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This is a shot I enjoyed getting; it’s an American Bittern (Botaurus lentiginosus) in San Rafael, CA on January 30, 2016. Bitterns are well-camouflaged to hide in the reeds and tall grasses of marshes, so finding one and getting a clear photo are a little difficult. This might be a guy or a girl: the males and females in this species are very similar, with the males often being slightly larger, and supposedly the male’s crown and back are more black while the female’s are more brown. I certainly can’t tell. In any case, s/he didn’t look too happy that I had noticed him/her. They did this great pose, even though I was 30 or 40 meters away on the trail, and then slowly slinked away into invisibility in the reeds.