Thursday, February 17, 2011





I've been counting birds on my commute between island and Crescent harbor again this fall and winter. It took awhile for me to get motivated this fall as there just weren't that many birds to count in September. I've been fairly faithful about counting since early October, keeping the data in a daily calendar instead of a spread sheet. The data entry will no doubt be great fun.

For at least a month now, I've been seeing birds that I couldn't quite make up my mind about. They were definitely alcids of some sort, just hadn't a good enough look at to decide which one. At first they reminded me of guillemots, just lacking the white wing patch. Some sort of murre made the most sense based on the features I could see. Given that winter Common murres have a distinctive black line on their cheek and winter Thick billed murres have a mostly black head, I decided that the mystery birds were most likely winter Thick-billed murres. I saw or thought I saw white on the chest so decided that these birds weren't in breeding plummage.
This last week, I've managed to get close enough to get a few photographs. I'm not sure about all of the birds I've seen the last month, but the birds in the photo seem to be Common murres in breeding plumage. The bill is thick, but doesn't seem to be the quite the right shape, the flanks are streaked and I'd be hard pressed to describe this bird as blockier than the rest of the Common murres that I've seen.
About half the birds I'm currently seeing on the commute are clearly winter plumage Common murres and the other half the same species in breeding plumage or possibly Thick-billed in some cases. Given that the birds reminded me of guillemots (all black chest) it might be safe to assume that most of the birds were breeding Common murres. Hard to say for certain though.
Now I'm pretty curious about the timing of plumage change in murres. Does it start this early most years or is it pretty variable? Guess I should add notes about plumage in the future.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011



Finally managed to get up to the Upper Cross trail sampling site to change out the ibutton early in the afternoon. The trail was crunchy with ice and as I walked up the trail through the woods, Varied thrushes (at least 20) flew up and away from me. I was a walking illustration of a bird plow. Also saw several juncos and Pacific wrens, 2 Hairy woodpeckers and a Song sparrow. Heard Pine siskins, Crossbills, Chickadees and Kinglets.
I hadn't been in the Gavan site since I put out the ibuttons out on October 28th, so I assumed that it might take awhile to locate them. I was correct, in fact I was getting worried that I wouldn't find it in the time I had available. So in the interest of finding the tree again, I took a few photos.