Westport, WA 9/24 - 9/29, Part 1

      Last week I travelled with my friends Jason and Chris to Washington state.  We had planned the trip back in March with the main purpose being a pelagic day trip out of Westport in Grays Harbor County.  We had originally planned to be there from Sunday to Thursday.  This would give us a couple days to bird the area before getting out on the boat on Wednesday.  Neither Jason nor I had been out to the Pacific Northwest before, so we looked forward to seeing new things: birds, whales and the like.  The problem with booking a trip six months in advance is that you cannot predict the weather.  When your trip is centered around nature and being outdoors, weather is a big deal.

On Saturday, the day before we were set to leave, New Jersey was getting battered by the outer bands of tropical storm Ophelia.  Likewise, the coast of Washington was dealing with a bomb cyclone.  That means they were getting hit with a lot of wind and rain too.  The good news for us was that Newark Liberty Airport (our departure point) is in north NJ and the eye of Ophelia was in North Carolina; and Seattle (our destination point) was over a two hour drive from the coast.  Our flight out was not affected. The bad news was that we received a message in the afternoon that our pelagic trip for Wednesday was already canceled.

Anxiety, at least on my part, began to hit.  The pelagic trip was being offered for Friday as long as enough participants could reschedule.  In between a couple of three-way phone calls, thanks to the people at Apple for FaceTime, we looked at our options.  Changing our flights to Tuesday and Saturday was not a problem.  However, our lodging was not available beyond Wednesday, and the refund date had already passed.  We decided to go ahead with the trip and make the best of it.  Once we were out there, we could alter our plans as long as three things would fall in to place.  First, the the boat was definitely going out on Friday; second, we would have to find new lodging for the last two days; and third, get on a flight home on Saturday.  

Left, varied thrush.  Right, chestnut-backed chickadee.  © S. Weiss

Off we went.  We arrived in Seattle before noon pacific time on Sunday.  Rain had not reached the Emerald City yet, so before heading out to the coast, we went to a park that Chris had been to previously.  Rain eventually caught up to us during our walk at Discovery Park, but the visit was productive.  I personally saw five new life birds.  My first was a Pacific wren calling from some logs under the forest canopy.  The little guy came out briefly, but my photos didn’t.  We came across several more over the next few  days and each one avoided being photographed.  Another first for me, and seen over the course of our trip was chestnut-backed chickadee.  Along the way I also added short-billed gull and rhinoceros auklet.  We saw dozens and dozens of short-billed gulls there, but none afterwards.  The auklets were small spots on the water from our view higher up on the trail edge.  Fortunately, we would get much better views later in the week.  The best bird though was a varied thrush that popped up on a bare tree branch in a clearing of the first walk.  It held its spot long enough for us all to see and photograph it well.

Above, spotted towhee.  Top left, short-billed gull.  Top right, golden-crowned sparrow.  © S. Weiss

Spotted towhee and Eastern towhee were once one species, the rufous-sided towhee.  Short-billed gull was once Mew gull, which was recently split into short-billed gull and common gull.

We added a few more western specialties at the park:  western grebe, California gull, spotted towhee, orange-crowned warbler and golden-crowned sparrow.  None of these were life birds and, except for golden-crowned sparrow, we would see more of them throughout the week.