Scenes From the Last Week

On Saturday, July 31st the K12s, K13s, and K14s of K-Pod headed south past Lime Kiln. They later met up wtih the L12s, J-Pod, and the other four K-Pod whales off the south end of the island. Here's K25 Scoter with his nephew K38 Comet:

On August 1st I was at the redoubt near American Camp when I came across a pair of "teenage" foxes. This one hopped up on the fence to get a better look at me over the tall grass:

Prints of this photo available here

On the way home, I had to pull over to snap a shot of this amazing rural scene with Mt. Baker in the background:

Speaking of Mt. Baker, it was looking especially striking in the evening of August 2nd. I went up to the deck above our marina to take this shot:

Today I went birding down at American Camp. I heard a young bald eagle making a lot of racket near the visitor's center, but it took me a while to locate him - a dark bird hidden in the shadows of the trees. I wonder what all the fuss was about?

Another pair of birds making some noise nearby also caught my attention. They turned out to be a pair of western wood-pewees - cool!

I made another stop at Jackson Beach to look for shorebirds, and I wasn't disappointed. There were 13 killdeer out on the spit. A small flocks of peeps was also foraging nearby. I crouched down and they slowly approached me. Just when I was ready to take a photo, they all took flight! This was the result:

There were 5 western sandpiper and 3 least sandpipers in the mix. I also found six greater yellowlegs. This time the "sit and wait" method was a little more successful, as a pair of them were feeding in the shallows and got close enough for me to take this shot:

They're almost hard to see in the above photo (except for the legs), but the pictures where there was gravel in the background they were almost completely camouflaged! There was also a flock of about 20 mew gulls on the sand spit, and I was surprised to see a pair of Caspian terns hanging out with them! I occasionally see a tern flying overhead at Jackson Beach, but this was the first time I've seen them on the ground there.

As you can tell from all the above photos, the weather has been pretty nice this week! We're finally getting some summer weather now that it's August. Here's hoping it continues through the weekend so I can have some more sunny wildlife encounters.