Birding on Presidents Day

American Bittern – Good Eatin at the Swamp:

We’ve had a horrid winter with almost continuous rain and gloomy days. And I know the rest of America has had worse so I can’t complain, even though I really want to.

This Presidents Day Weekend was the first reasonable weather we’ve had here in the avalanche control basin since October. Unless you count that day we went on the bird watching boat ride in Bellingham.

Which brings us to the subject: we went bird watching. I’d really like to bore you with the list of exotic birds we saw but I realize that birding may have a different meaning to you than it does to us. “It’s good eatin, if you get all the shot removed.”

We saw some places we never saw before. There’re several National Wildlife Refuges around and it only takes a little work to find out where they are. Best of all, if they charge admission you can use your Golden Age Pass and get in free. Suddenly getting old has a benefit. Wait, I forgot what I was talking about. Oh yes.

In the year 2008 (I never thought I’d live this long, believe you me!) the bald eagle has returned from the brink of extinction and you can see them about everywhere. Once I was absentmindedly looking off at Coal Creek Park from our deck and I noticed a shadow of a bird on the trees. My massive brain kicked into gear and said, “Shadow? What kind of bird is big enough to have a shadow?” Of course it was an eagle. When I looked into the sky and found the majestic shadow maker it turned out to be four of them. Impressive. Now, years later, it’s possible to see them fairly regularly from our deck.

But I’m a little off track. The American Bittern is a bird that likes to hide in the swamps and spend most of its time walking around among the reeds. It’s kind of orangish and a little like a heron with a shorter neck. It blends right in with the marsh grass. I don’t know why they call it “bittern.”

At this particular Wildlife Refuge, where we got in free, the ranger told us somebody had spotted a bittern at the big “R” on the map. So we drove around the swamp seeing eagles, mallards, Canada geese, coots, mergansers, teal, and oak trees until we reached the big R area. So I drove along real slow (this place does not allow walking since it annoys the birds) and looked for a bittern never expecting to see one.

They are fairly elusive. They seem to be kind of heron like except they are not nearly so easy to see. Well, you probably guessed, I saw one right beside my heap. It was doing the classic bittern walk among the reeds and it was only marginally annoyed at having somebody watch.

I’ve seen the American Bittern only two times before and in both instances it was flying away. This one looked exactly like the picture in the bird book, including the background. Wow, I got a real bargain.

Bird watching is a very good hobby for a person of advanced years. Very few birds attack and it’s usually not hard to find other bird watching people to talk to. Since I turned 65 I find it kind of fun to visit with the random people you find out in public doing similar activities.

I got off track again. Oh yeah, it was a very enjoyable trip and we saw a number of eagles, terns, geese, gulls, ducks, and wrens. But we didn’t see a deer. Deer is almost a standard sighting on every trip. It’s rare that we don’t see a single one. We’ve even seen them in places where deer are not supposed to be. But ironically we saw them in our yard a couple of days before we left. They like to eat our bushes and fruit trees. When we were at the Columbian White Tail Deer National Refuge we didn’t see a single one. But, man, there a lot of geese.

This isn’t really a lot about rapid transit. For example I could have talked about the Snohomish County Transit double deck bus that’s being tried out. But the trip to the ocean on the first good weekend in a long time is what’s on my mind. Since I write this I guess I can pretty much write what I want.

Which brings up a question. What’s your favorite bird watching place? I’m always looking for new places to watch birds (or an excuse to go there) so let me know.

Al