Lightning, Rainbows, Planets and a Couple Birds - November 1st

Pumpkin seeds

The year so far on a map.  The green lines across the bottom are the start of this trip

I blame the pumpkin seeds for my sleep patterns.  I had been tired enough one day last week, and we got to carving pumpkins.  As I waited on the couch, I drifted from consciousness... and woke up at like... 1:30 AM with a bowl of pumpkin innards waiting to get thrown in the oven.  I obliged them, couldn't get back to sleep, and the pattern followed for a few days.

So it wasn't a stretch to get up in time to explore some new corners of the county.  In fact I still got up too early!

5:30 AM - McCleary

I think that's about the time I arrived.  It may have been six.  Either way, it was dark.  I got up this early because I was intrigued by the area north of the airport for this Grays Harbor County town.  Some roads actually wind around into Mason County with names like County Line Road, and Oak Meadow Road.  This close to places like Brady Loop and Wenzel Slough Roads,  I figured that it wouldn't be a stretch for a Rough-legged Hawk to show up.


I called for owls casually as the sun came up.  The open/edge habitat seemed like it might be good for Great Horned, and Barred seems like it's possible anywhere.  I got none of the above, and nothing more interesting than American Robins, American Crows and Song Sparrows.  The sky gave the best show, with planets lined up in the east, running ahead of the sun, and lightning in the west.  The whole day was a constantly shifting potpourri of clearing, clouds and numerous rainbows over the course of the day.

Many people had pitied me for being out on such a lousy day, but it was pretty awesome, in all honesty.  Not... awesome like when the gal at Starbucks said it the other day.  "Do you want your receipt?"  "Yes please"  "Awesome!"   Somehow this word has become completely disconnected from actual awe.  The sky was literally awesome most of the day.   I mean... except for the brief times when it was the simple drizzle of Novembruary.

It never looked like this for long!

Heading down to Highway 8, or almost to it (I actually took the road paralleling it to the north).  I was headed to Matlock-Brady Road.  This was a road I had at least been on as I searched for Bullock's Oriole back in the summer, but I'd never done the whole run from Schafer to Matlock..

From Schafer to Matlock

They were all Red-tailed Hawks this morning

I had a few good stops here, heading down Mary M Knight Road from the school eastward, and then along Deckerville Road to the Grays Harbor border.  I kept eying the Red-tailed Hawks closely, hopeful of turning one into a Rough-legged, but never quite succeeding.  I had periods where I was able to walk along rustic roads in between squalls of rain, finding creepers, towhees and some of the other common sparrows, but nothing really of note.

Ford's Loop Road

Ford's Loop Road was a good side trip.  I didn't find anything interesting there, but I seemed to recall that bluebirds had been found in this area before, and the jumble of detritus around the clear cuts seemed to fit with that idea.  The dirt/gravel road had some big potholes in places, but was still pretty drivable all in all.

Buddha!  But karma brought me no birds

I made a turn up the road towards Frisken Wye.  Why?  Because cool name.  I knew this was one of those years where I needed to follow little sidetrips like that.  This one turned up a cool house with a Buddha statue, a bird feeder, a pair of aggressive dogs, and a sign promising that awful things would befall tresspassers.  I had to get out to get a picture of the Buddha for Khanh Tran - my Buddhist birding friend, and I could hear him telling me that karma would bring me a good bird.

It never looked like this for long!

Ya know... I either had a really interesting bird, or I had a common bird whose chip call completely eluded me.  I got audio of the bird, but couldn't properly see it, as it sat in a tree obscured by branches.  It proceeded to hang out in the back yard from there, unresponsive to any pishing, calling constantly as the dogs eyed me, wondering if I was going to try to get a better view again after barking me back towards the car the first time.  It started to rain and I knew I was done.

Lunch and a chase

Yeah, that's just water

I meandered my way back along Matlock-Shelton Road, with a few stops at spots that seemed vaguely good.  I also made a turn down Little Egypt Road.  The flooding here was a bit crazy during one stretch, and I got thinking about Egypt... Nile... flooding.... There were Virginia Rails vocalizing quite freely, but nothing else out of the ordinary.


I pulled in to Shelton and made my way to Blondie's.  This was the... third?... time that I had stopped in at this greasy spoon next to the Shelton Inn, and I decided to have Blondie's Mess.  It was the perfect thing to have on a day where I'd been rained on intermittently.  I pulled up my phone and checked email, seeing that there was a video posted to Facebook with a pheasant near Mason Lake.

What devilry is this!?

I paid up and ran to the car, snapping a picture of the directions, just in case I got turned around and couldn't pull them up again from a lack of digital service.  In the end, this was a good trip, not for finding birds, but for visiting new places.  I got up to Mason Lake in search of Trails End Road.  My GPS took me past Trails Road to Trails End Drive... which I took to the corner of Trails End Drive and Trails End Drive!

A bit lost, I finally pulled over to talk to a local who was on his way out of his driveway.  We looked at the directions together, and nodded, sending me back with perfect directions to Trails Road, calling it Trails End Road.  I looked around, and realized that I was at the spot where the video had been taken, and did a little walking.

Pheasants are funny.  I've mentioned before that their continuous existence in the county is in serious question.  Many of them are released for hunting, and I have several sources now which tell me that the pheasants of Mason County are not likely countable anywhere they might be found.  I still felt like I needed to see them.  They are a game bird that makes its presence a phenomenon in the county over a very large area.  It would seem weird not to have them on the year list, especially since nearly every Mason County lister includes them.

"The Ridge"  The green lines show my trip in the Mason Lake area

Following my Tweeters report, Mountain Quail Mary herself noted that the pheasants up there are released birds, and I decided two things:  I'm going to get them onto the list for the year, and I'm going to drop an asterisk on the list.  This stop proved fruitless, however, so I hung it up and made my way across "The Ridge".

Coming down to Hood Canal on McReavy Road

I don't know what else to call this, but between Puget Sound and Hood Canal, the land rises.  The Biser's property at Still Waters Farm splits the difference, with water going both ways.  It's a large, underbirded area, at any rate, and I was glad to get to drive by some places like Limerick Lake and Cranberry Lake that had only been blue shapes on a map before.  Eventually I hit McEwan's Prairie Road and then McReavy Road, which leads down to Union and Hood Canal.  

Union

Double-crested Cormorants bracing in the wind

There's a Eurasian Wigeon somewhere in this picture

I stopped at the mouth of the Skokomish - a silly place to miss when looking for new birds - and was rewarded with a Eurasian Wigeon (179).  I smiled, seeing the red head of the wigeon standing out next to the green heads of his cousins.  It was a stretch, but the lighting was good at this hour in the afternoon, and the clouds had mercifully parted for a little bit.  The wind was still pretty brisk, and the Bonaparte's Gulls (present in unusually high numbers this day) played on it, diving and darting around the mouth of the county's major river.

A soggy Hunter Farms - many fields around here were flooded and full of gulls

I couldn't find any other ducks gulls or shorebirds of interest, so I packed it up and went to Hunter Farms.  I have no idea what it would have been like for corn mazes and pumpkin picking if this place had been this flooded a few weeks back!  The rows I had walked for the White-throated Sparrow was still walkable, but my shoes would occasionally siiiiiiiink in, and no odd call notes or odd field marks made it seem worth staying as the rain started to pick up.  It was absolute sheets of rain as I departed Hunter Farms and drove towards Skokomish Valley Road.

Rain

The heavens opened up as I made my way to Skokomish Valley Road, where I hoped to continue the search for a Rough-legged Hawk.  I got a short bit up the road and saw the road closed sign.  I also saw people driving around it.  "Why not!"  I joined the locals in circumnavigating the sign and continuing up the fairly drivable road.  This continued for a short bit, when the road actually did become a bit sketchy due to the flooding.  The locals were doing just fine in it, but ya know... the locals were driving trucks.  So I turned tail and made my way back up Hood Canal.

The rain continued, so I popped in to Alderbrook Resort to keep dry, and to make a stop at the fanciest spot in the County.  Alderbrook has a hotel, spa, golf course, restaurant and bar, as well as boat rentals from their marina.  For today, the bar was enough.  I grabbed a cup of clam chowder and a cold pint of ESB, watching the Seahawks take on the Cowboys as the rain came down hard.  I had just about finished when the sky did what it had done all day - shifting to clear and throwing around some rainbows.  I settled up and made my way out to the marina

The clearing shrunk again by the time I was back out, but it was at least not raining, and there was actually one gorgeous patch of blue in the sky.  The water held scores of Common and Barrow's Goldeneyes, Common Mergansers, and Surf Scoters.  I lazily looked through the scoters for any White-winged or Black, unsuccessful in the end.  It seemed like I might end the year with a total of one Black Scoter sighting!

From the docks at Alderbrook - rafts of goldeneyes at left and right

Success!*

Getting Late

The Seahawks game got close... stayed close... and we ended up holding on and winning in a game where only one touchdown was scored.  It wasn't pretty, but a win is a win.  The Seahawks would head back and look at their victory and figure out what they could do better the next time around.  Receiver Ricardo Lockette was taken from the field with a neck injury that brought the game to a stop for ten minutes before he gave a wave and a thumbs up as the wheeled him off of the field.

The game was an interesting snapshot of a few things:  It showed that competition pushes people to do their best, to push the limits of what they can do, and of what has been done. It showed that there is a difference between success and satisfaction, although they often do come hand in hand.  It also showed how trivial competition is in the face of Bigger Things.  

Fox Sparrow - Theler

And so I got out of the car for the many-eth time at Theler, walked the boardwalk in the drizzle, and got an unsatisfactory victory bird:  a heard-only Ring-necked Pheasant (180*).  It's probably a released bird, and pheasants are one of those birds that really *has* to be seen, not for identification purposes, but for enjoyment.  I tried.  I was on the big bridge and heard it from across the large central tidal marsh.  I had to circle the marsh on the path and came to the area where I'd heard the pheasant, and waited... Nothing.

I wanted the bird in front to be a Swamp Sparrow - probably Song.

I wish it could have been a Black Phoebe or a Swamp Sparrow, but then again, this was an important part of the year in Mason.  A year without a Ring-necked Pheasant would be a weird year indeed. My sense of humor brought me through the anticlimactic 180th* bird just fine.  Regardless of how the rest of the year goes (will I add another bird?  will Cara pass me in the end?), I think the year will end as a demonstration of the positive things that can come from striving for a record.  It's trivial in the end, and if I step back and think about how lucky I am to have the support of friends and family to do this whole thing, it's pretty amazing.

But I'm still plotting and planning. :)