Sunny, Winter’s Day on the Coast

It’s our third winter here in Oregon. The first one was very mild and was a good easing in to living in a place with actual seasons (at least for me, anyway). The second year was a bit more typical for Oregon. But this year has been especially wet and cold. There’s been heavier rain showers rather than just gray mist, and lots more snow and ice. So, when there are sunny days with no rain in sight, we have to take advantage of them and head outside!

What a gorgeous day at Hatfield Marine Science Center Trail

A couple of weeks ago, one of these precious sunny days meant going to the coast. The birds seemed to enjoy this lovely sunshine just as much as we did. There were lots of leaps for joy! Ok, so more like leaps for food, but still fun, nonetheless. It so happened that I got good shots of some of these hopping water birds. Can you guess what they are? Test your bird ID skills with this fun little quiz. Answers will be revealed at the end of the post. (Those of you who already know the answers from following me on facebook or instagram, let others guess!) No peeking!

Bird ID Quiz Pic #1

Bird ID Quiz Pic #2

Bird ID Quiz Pic #3

It was quite a ducky day, overall. We saw both Greater and Lesser Scaup, Common Goldeneyes, tons of Surf Scoters, White-winged Scoter, Bufflehead, Hooded and Red-breasted Mergansers, and Harlequin Ducks.

Female Common Goldeneye

Female Common Goldeneye

Pair of Surf Scoters

We had especially good looks at some Surf Scoters as a few individuals kept floating close by and sometimes underneath us, popping out on either side of the fishing pier where we stood. Most other people on this pier were crabbing and looked oddly at this pair of birders loaded with optics and no crab traps. But it wasn’t just crabs they were catching. One guy pulled up a couple of Sculpin, which he tossed right back into the water, but not before I got a shot of that oh-so-amazing face.

Male Surf Scoter

Female Surf Scoter

What an amazing face on this duck! That bill is wild!

But this face is even wilder! And it looks like his side fins are fingers. 

While walking the trail at the Hatfield Marine Science Center, we had a super close encounter with a gorgeous male Northern Harrier. It was so odd to see him on this estuary trail, and he gave us quite a great show! It was almost overshadowed by our frustration of getting a good flight shot of him, but Nick prevailed and got one awesomely clear shot.

Looks like he's hunting something in the tall grasses

Boom! There it is!

It was also a pretty good grebe and loon day, too. Just ask this adorable Common Loon! We saw a few Red-throated loons, too, but they stayed farther away.

The South Jetty in Newport was especially productive that day. We had super close looks at a Brant. We saw plenty of them at Hatfield, but this one was kind enough to hang out close and in good light. These are definitely one of my favorite geese. They are so elegant and chic.

We also had not just one, but two Long-tailed ducks turn up! We had a male and a female. The male did some funny butt-scooting in the water, almost as if he were trying to sit on his rump. It was weird, and it made for some funny poses.

Female Long-tailed Duck

Male Long-tailed Duck

Duck booty-scootin' boogie!

The South Jetty is a good spot to watch gulls. They gather at the parking area and sit nice and still while you work on your gull ID skills. One other birder there pointed out what looked like what could have been a Glaucus Gull. His wife and he deliberated, and we examined it, as well. It was so evenly light-colored all over, and it did have a dark tip on the bill. But alas, the not clean bill (black bleeding into the inner bill) indicated that it was a very glaucussy-looking Glaucus x Glaucus-winged Gull Hybrid. Bah!

NOT a pure Glaucus Gull, unfortunately for us

So, now that you’ve had some time to look at the bird ID quiz photos, here come the answers. Number one is a female Greater Scaup! I think this one was especially tricky. It’s hard enough to ID a lone female brown duck in the first place, let alone with her head dunked under water.

Female Greater Scaup

If you guessed a grebe for number two, then you were on the right track. And if you guessed Red-necked Grebe, you were 100% right! This was also a tricky one since it is a mottled, grayish grebe, and the bodies of Eared, Horned, Western, and Red-necked Grebes (all of which we saw) can all look quite similar in the winter.

And lastly, this long-bodied bird with a greenish sheen and white flank patch indicates the ever lovely Pelagic Cormorant! The sun was hitting this guy just right, making his iridescent feathers gleam so nicely. And even the colors of his orange bill and red gape really popped. 

Thanks for playing along! I hope you had fun with the quiz and seeing the sights of our sunny coastal day.

Here Be Albatrosses: Our First Pacific Pelagic

Ah, the Pacific Ocean. Our longing eyes have scanned your vast and mighty waters endlessly, searching, without hope, for glimpses of Captains Nemo, Hornblower, Ahab, or Wolf Larsen. Somewhere out there are are Blue Whales, Mola mola, and Giant Squid. More to the point, there are albatrosses. That there are albatrosses off the Oregon coast is something that my brain has only barely managed to register as fact, and yet we were certain to see some once we got out on the open sea for our first ever pelagic on the Pacific.

Yaquina Bay Bridge at sunrise

This would be the inaugural voyage for a new company, Oregon Pelagic Tours, setting out from Yaquina Bay around 7:30a. This was in mid-February, and the earliest molting Red-necked Grebes were starting to take on a cleaner, more dapper look. Large numbers of Surf Scoters and Western Gulls combined with lesser numbers of assorted cormorants, loons, and diving ducks close to the rock jetty. As we made our way out of the harbor, we started seeing more and more alcids: Common Murres, Marbled and Ancient Murrelets, Rhinoceros Auklets.

Red-necked Grebe looking handsome

One of the first good birds seen on the trip was a Parakeet Auklet, which both Maureen and I were able to see, but only poorly. It was certainly an auklet -- we can swear to that much -- although we wouldn't have been able to say which kind, since it stayed relatively distant, and the waves insisted on keeping it hidden 80% of the time. Oh well, it'll have to be a lifer for another day.

But soon, the main attraction was upon us. Our expected albatross for the day was Laysan, with hopes of maybe (fingers crossed) finding a Short-tailed or two. What was not expected was that we'd be swamped by roughly two dozen Black-footed Albatrosses over the course of the day, outnumbering Laysans by a comfortable margin. Seeing an albatross at all was one of the pinnacles of our birding careers, especially out west, and here we had absolute beauties from two different species. 

Black-footed Albatross

Just a ridiculous number of Black-footed Albatrosses. Six in this photo alone.

And a good south wind sprung up behind;
The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariner's hollo!

Laysan Albatross

Joining them in good numbers were Northern Fulmars, dwarfed by the albatrosses, and with almost half the wingspan. For us, these were nearly as exciting. They were always a remote possibility during the pelagics we've taken out of Florida, but they'd always eluded us. I hadn't imagined that we would find them in such abundance once we got out on the Pacific, but it was fantastic watching them zip every which way, threading the space between the other pelagic species.

Northern Fulmar

Black-footed Albatrosses come in for a landing, while the indefatigable fulmar threads the air on the left side of the photo

Laysan Albatross and Northern Fulmar

The other bird that we were practically guaranteed during the trip, and that we were no less excited about for it's local abundance, was Black-legged Kittiwake. It's a really striking gull, and an awesome compliment to the menageries that gathered in the chum slicks. Unfortunately, I can't help but feel that we short-changed them attention-wise, since they had to compete with the most perfect gliding machines ever to grace the skies. 

Black-legged Kittiwake

Black-footed Albatrosses and Black-legged Kittiwake

Before we left Savannah, we were warned that even if we never got seasick on the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific would surely do us in. Precautions were taken, but they proved inadequate for one of us, putting our principle photographer out of commission for some stretches of time (unfortunately, only one of us saw a Pink-footed Shearwater). On top of that, we missed some species that were seen briefly, or by only a few (neither of us saw a Parasitic Jaeger or Thayer's Gull). I casually heard one of the spotters mentioned that he'd seen a Mola mola earlier… well, thanks a lot, buddy.

Still, this trip completely lived up to our expectations. We didn't see a huge number of new species, but we did see the expected ones. They were new, and they were magnificent. Albatrosses are no longer merely the stuff of dreams (particularly laudanum-induced ones; see Coleridge, above), but are no less the stuff of legend for their being real and present. As the boat made it's way back into the harbor, we checked the jetty for Rock Sandpipers, which never turned up. We did get one last lifer for the day, though: out on one of the buoys was a solitary Steller's sea lion, clearly much more blonde than the California sea lions that laze on the docks all winter long. Soon afterward we disembarked, partly reminiscing about an amazing day, and partly fantasizing about what we'd see next time.