Sanibel Island, Florida December 2015

Well, it's the holidays again and that means Florida to me.  Took a whopping nine days off of work and hopped on a plane to Tampa to go stay with my mom and grandma.  My mom had the brilliant idea of getting us a place on Sanibel Island for a few nights so we could all have a bit of a vacation. My grandma used to come here almost annually to stay with friends at the beach when my grandpa was alive, so she has fond memories of the place.  It's just south of Fort Myers on the gulf coast and is a pretty chill place, not a crazy beach boardwalk with highrises on the shore. 

I pretty much left everything in my suitcase as we were driving down the day after I flew in to Tampa. We packed up the car with everything we thought we might need and hopped on 75 south for about a two and half hour trip. The weather was partly cloudy but dry and warmer than usual, about 83 degrees.  Always surreal to leave 40 degrees behind and step off the plane into 80.  Traffic on the island was being directed at the main entrance and a few other key intersections by a traffic cop waving cars onward.  I don't think there are any stoplights on the island, and I guess to avoid installing any, they bring in traffic cops during the high winter season. Can you imagine if there were no stoplights anywhere and only people directed traffic? Hmm.. So we got to our place, checked in and unloaded all the luggage.  It was the basic resort room; a bedroom for grandma, and mom and I on the sleeper pullout in the living room.  A little kitchenette with a sink and fridge and microwave, and the basics: a toaster, a coffee maker and a blender for all those imminent daiquiris. A screened-in patio looked out west over the sea grass and scrub to the ocean.  It was cute and comfortable. There was a pool and a poolside bar, a place to rent tandem ocean kayaks and bicycles, and paths out to the beach with the deckchairs and umbrellas.  There was also a sandcastle built just as you came onto the beach, replete with Disney-esque characters, which was kind of amazing. Have no idea if the hotel built it or just a random beachgoer, but it ended up being a helpful visual tool for me to pick our hotel out of the miles of similar resorts up and down the Sanibel coast line.  

We spent the next three days eating out and generally just loafing around.  My mom and I rented a sea kayak and didn't see any dolphins or birds on the water, but got in a good hour of paddling.  It was great exercise and just nice to be on the water.  Then we rented bikes and rode to the lighthouse on the east tip of the island through the back neighborhoods. Lots of the resorts on Sanibel offer bicycles and many residents ride bikes of their own, so the bike paths are great and run along most roads on the island. We drove up to the northwest side of the island, through the beautiful landscaped homes with ridiculous nautical names.  We ate at the Bubble Room in that neck of the woods, a kooky ramshackle place that is filled with 1930's through 1950's Hollywood paraphernalia, with Christmas music playing 365 days a year.  The waitstaff are dressed up like girl/boyscout meets elf working at TGIF. So, all in all, pretty surreal. I was so dazed, I managed to pour my own iced tea all over our table...

Of course the majority of my pictures are of birds, because I can't stop, and I won't stop.. (Imagine me doing some variation on the MC Hammer/running-man dance right there..)  And of course, one morning my mom and grandma were kind enough to indulge me with a drive through "Ding" Darling NWR which is right there on Sanibel. We saw two alligators right by the side of the road, and a couple of other life birds for me, the Little Blue heron and the Anhinga. The rest of the pictures are culled from walks up and down the beachfront near our hotel.  Almost exclusively Black-Bellied plover in winter plumage (aka, a white belly- so confusing), Willets, a pair of Sanderlings, three Ruddy Turnstones, and a few Snowy egrets.  Brown pelicans, Osprey, Fish crows, Laughing gull, Ring-billed gull, and an exciting Lesser Black-backed gull.  I might not have ID'd that last except my friend Jill saw the same bird on her trip down to Sanibel a month prior and we had a look at her pictures to verify.  And my favorite, absolute favorite:  the Royal and Sandwich terns. Hilarious birds, so much personality. But I'm a tern lover, they never cease to amaze me. Alas, no Skimmers, or other kinds of Plovers, no Woodstorks except on the roadside while whizzing down Highway 75 at 60 miles an hour..  And no Roseate Spoonbills, waaaah!!!  I did see a handful of Magnificent Frigatebirds flying while on our bike ride, and few other assorted species.  

Well, here are some pics to illustrate the joy of 80 degrees, sunshine, and shorebirds.  Oh, and did I mention the dizzying number of bites I received from "no see-ums"?  Insane, almost 150 on my right leg alone. I looked like I had a horrible chickenpox outbreak. I've never had that happen before on Sanibel, but it apparently can be an issue there. I didn't take any pictures of it because it was just too repulsive. But anywho, back to the birds..

 this must have taken some time..

 royal and sandwich terns and laughing gulls 

 terns and gulls (ring-billed, laughing and lesser black-backed)

 royal and sandwich tern and laughing gull

 great peach jelly brain with shell..kind of gross

 osprey

 double-breasted cormorant and meal

 ring-billed gull

 ruddy turnstone

 black-bellied plover, possibly a bright juvenile

a different black-bellied plover, this one more white and gray, probably an adult

 immature laughing gull

 royal tern

 royal tern fledgling asking for food

 royal tern fledgling being ignored by adult

osprey in palm

 beach was littered with fish skeletons

 island morning glory

 snowy egret and laughing gull

 immature lesser black-backed gull

black-bellied plover, terns

 adult lesser black-backed gull

 ring-billed gull

 royal and sandwich terns

 little blue heron

 anhinga

 mourning dove

 white ibis

willets, american white pelican, two possible female blue-winged teals

 alligator!

 another alligator!!

 immature little blue heron

 not a cool monkey, no, a raccoon up a palm

 Mom and Grandma at the north beach on Sanibel island

 fish crow flock

 fish crow

 magnificent frigatebird

 lighthouse and osprey 

 willet

 snowy egret

 pileated woodpecker

 snowy egret

 brown pelican

 willet

 willet at sunset

 Sanibel sunset

 miami vice style skyscape behind the hotel

amazing and cool crab spider in the corner of the the pool back at home

So that's about it for the Florida shenanigans.  I love birdwatching there, it's beyond gratifying.  My friend Jill and I laugh about how roadside and drainage ditch birding in Florida can turn up more seemingly exotic bird life than I will see in a year in Oregon.. It's pretty fun, and I was happy to have gotten a chance to go through Ding Darling on this trip. Well, the new year is almost upon us, and I have travel plans to spend it and my birthday on Oregon's central coast so perhaps I'll see something fun to share.
I wish you all a peaceful and happy holiday and New Year, and until next time, happy trails!

Haystack Rock, Cannon Beach, OR (parts un et deux)

It's taken me a whole month to get around to posting this entry.  This is what happens when you decide to start a blog about your outdoor adventures when it's the beginning of adventure season. Perhaps this will result in a plethora of entries in the coming fall, all documenting my frenzy of spring and summer activities. But I do prefer to get my fingers to the keyboard sooner than later so all the pertinent and humorous details don't slip away. That being said, here's a look back at my time at Haystack Rock in May.

I drove out from Portland the first time on a whim really, on Monday May 4th.  The day was gray and threatened rain any moment; how can that already be a distant memory just six weeks later as we face a 101 degree temperature this weekend?  But I digress..  So, gray and windy and not really a day for photos, but definitely a day for shorebird migration potential at the coast.  I decided to head out highway 30 to Astoria and hit Fort Stevens first, then head south down 101.  

I hit traffic at a dead stop just south of St. Helens.  Highway 30 is just one lane in either direction with very few cross streets to provide alternate routes, and our northbound lane quickly lengthened into an endless convoy of semis and log trucks interspersed with passenger cars.  The fellow in front of me got out and walked up the road a bit to converse with another truck, then came back and reported there had been a fatality and it would be at least an hour if not more.  I didn't know what to do, it was too far to backtrack by going over the hills to 26, and I was determined to get through to Astoria.  These are the times that Google maps online app really shines.  Looked on my phone to see that a little road just a quarter mile up actually hugged the side of the hill and could possibly get me around this accident.  There isn't really a breakdown lane on 30, it's too narrow, so I crept into the empty oncoming lane and scooted up to the side street.  It was a single lane road that wound around the neighborhood hillside and popped out down the highway from the accident.  I was jubilant to be back on the road but somehow felt guilty, as if I had cheated and wasn't honoring the levity of this highway tragedy.  What are you gonna do?  I hit the road.

Heading through Astoria, I took a left and climbed up the crazy hills that comprise the residential part of town, and back down the other side.  Crossing Young River, I took a left on Wireless Rd, which loops through a couple miles of verdant marshy farmland.  A local resident had posted sightings of big numbers of whimbrels in the fields and I had high hopes.  But no luck, only a frenzy of gulls and ravens above a pile of \ industrial farm waste behind a barn.  And nowhere to park and walk as it's all private land.  About a mile down the road there was a pasture of some of the most beautifully marked cattle, and I wanted to stop to snap some pictures but the farmer was right there with them and I was feeling somewhat guilty as an invasive out of town birdwatcher, so kept on trucking. 

I headed out to Fort Stevens to take literally a hundred pictures of a huge flock of dunlin trying to escape me up and down the beach, and a few of the resident flock of caspian terns, then headed out to the jetty to face some pretty sturdy winds.  Not much flying around in that, so decided to head south to Cannon Beach and try my luck with some puffins.  I have been in Oregon for 12 years now and still have not seen a puffin up close, so I was ready to end my losing streak.  As I drove through Cannon Beach, I couldn't help but be reminded of parts of Cape Cod.  The town caters to a similar mentality, but a brown cedar shingled version.  It's a little snooty, but it's also nice to not have the boardwalk crassness to cope with.  So I parked downtown and then marched across the sand towards the goal looming every larger in my binoculars: Haystack Rock, home to thousands of nesting seabirds every spring.  Hundreds of circling common murres filled the sky to the north of the rock, mixed with mostly western gulls, but nary a puffin to be found. What the hell?  I took a bunch of unexciting gray pictures and then the murres headed out to sea, leaving a bunch of gulls in their place.  Can you say whoop dee doo?  There were droves of lovely Velella velella jellyfish pushed to shore with high spring winds, and left behind with the tides. Sad little purple sailors.. By this point the rain had begun in earnest and I had to concede defeat.. This was not my day, but I would have it. Damn you puffins..

                                flock of dunlin

                                caspian terns

                                        Velella vellela jellyfish stranded on the shore


Haystack Rock Part Deux.

After a rather sad first attempt, I decided I needed to be more methodical about my approach, narrow down those extenuating circumstances.  I pulled out a calendar for May and looked at the high and low tides on all the days I could head out.  I was looking for a weekday, with low tide sometime in the AM so the sun would be behind me, and some halfway decent weather.  I settled on Sunday the 31st, which had a 6:52am low tide and crossed my fingers it would be too early in the day to really be overrun with tourists yet.  It's  about an hour and a half  to Cannon Beach from Portland via Hwy 26 west, so I was pretty pleased with myself to be on the road at 5:45 that morning.  Getting up at 4:30am for anything other than a trip to the airport is not a usual event in my life.  I didn't grow up hunting or fishing or feeding farm animals at the crack of dawn; a begrudging appearance at my first class of the day at school was as good as it got.  The road out on this Sunday was wonderfully empty except for a few surfers also racing out to greet the waves.

Got to Cannon Beach with little fanfare, and headed out the same path towards Haystack Rock.  I looked for circling birds as I approached and saw nothing but a few gulls.  As I got closer I saw that the members and signs of HRAP were out in full effect, as happens every low tide, bless their hearts. Haystack Rock Awareness Program comes out during any low tide that takes place in daylight hours and sets up very polite a-boards asking people to not approach the rock and to tread very carefully in and around the tidal pool/sea gardens.  They're almost all retired folks, and are so nice and full of information.

One HRAP guy kindly showed me the bald eagle on the south side of the rock that had effectively scared all the seabirds away.  He told me he's actually seen the eagles eat all five common species that breed on the rock during spring season:  pelagic cormorant, pigeon guillemot, common murre, tufted puffin and the black oystercatcher.  Do eagles eat western gulls? Probably in a pinch.. I also saw brown pelicans that day, and talked with another photographer who'd been waiting for the exchange of mated oystercatchers. Apparently every 90 minutes the mate would return to the nest and swap out with the roosting oystercatcher. Very diplomatic behavior, and just the best looking birds. Three of the birds I saw that day had an arresting red accessory, either feet or beak.  Very eye-catching, or oystercatching as it would seem.

                                        Pigeon guillemot and those Red legs

                                         American oystercatcher and western gull

                                         Brown pelicans


The photographer finally managed to catch the exchange on film just before he had to flee the rising tide.  I missed it, as I had become obsessed with trying to catch pictures of birds in flight a bit to the north of the rock.  The same bald eagle finally picked a target and set off a swarm of defensive gulls and murres, then flew back over the rock with its breakfast in its talons.  After that, everything seemed to loosen up and the huge flock of murres began to circle and land on the rock for some nest checks, which lasts for maybe a half hour to 45 minutes, then they're back off to sea to sit on the water and fish the waves. I included a photo, one of many I took of common murres landing on the north side of Haystack Rock.  Most true seabirds are not graceful creatures on land and walking is tough for them, but man do those landings make me laugh!  But wait, mixed in with the murres and cormorants, those smaller little black football shapes with wings!  Puffins!  One and then another!  I snapped away desperately, but alas, all the pictures are blurry of my little Sasquatches of the sky.  I've included one or two anyway just to prove I did get to see some.  I was able to get a few other pix of birds and tidal pool joy and more are included on my flickr site which unfortunately I can't get linked to this blog.  I posted some on my facebook page if you want to navigate through there.  The puffins and the murres are at Haystack Rock throughout July usually, tending their young, trying to keep them from gulls and eagles until they're old enough to fly and join their folks out at sea for the rest of the year.  It's pretty fun and a great way to spend a morning at low tide.  I feel so silly for not having gotten to this sooner, but I'm convinced this will happily become one of my spring traditions as long as I'm in Oregon.

                                       Bald eagle and some pissed off western gulls

                                        common murre landing gear hilarity

                                         common murre

my blurry little tufted puffin

               the dizzying tumult of Haystack Rock

I headed north on the way home, reversing the route from my last trip, and stopped by Ft. Stevens. With the sun out, I was happy to spend some quality time with the rowdy gaggle of Caspian Terns at the lagoon beach.  They hang out and fish the lagoon just before before the Columbia River meets the Pacific, and they're noisy and protective and hilarious.  I hid in the tall sea grass right behind them and snapped some pictures, and then noticed I was surrounded by lady bugs crawling up and down the sea grass.  I'm curious about that, they just seemed to crawl to a certain height, then turn around and back down, but hundreds of them around me were doing the same thing.  I must be missing something, maybe they're marking territory somehow?  I love micro moments in nature; helps provide me with perspective, both literally and figuratively.  All in all, a very successful day and a great reprise to my earlier attempt.  Viva the Oregon coast!

                                      Caspian terns - my favorite crew with a call that sounds like cats in the sky

                                      lady bug love

Oh, and you can click on any of the pictures to see them larger..