Today was the first time in exactly 6 months since we have been out birding, and due to terrible MiFi location, it took far longer to get these images up and edited, so I will post them for now with hopes I will give a real update on our current status.
ToRn
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Posted in State Parks, what hell kind of animals are we seeing?, what the hell are we seeing?, what the hell kind of pictures are these?
We have wanted to see one of these for a very long time.
We are sitting at our desk doing some work when Pauline looked out the window and about 12′ away was the Pileated Woodpecker just pecking into a hole. I had enough time to snap a few pictures through our tinted/dirty window before I tried to go outside and get a better shot.
Unfortunately, he flew deeper into the bush and I was unable to get a clean shot, but at least I got these 2 decent ones.
We have also been seeing a Doe with 2 fawns, both of them very small. I had never seen deer so small. We have seen them a few times over the last few weeks.
On June 12 I just happen to look out the front window and saw a mother and 1 fawn walking by, I was able to get a few shots of them. I do not know if this is the same Doe/Fawn that we have seen, but I think the odds are high, it was. There are no predators on the island out side of dogs and cars, but it could also been just too small/weak.
Again, not sure if this is the same ones or not, I keep hoping I will run into the trio once more.
Weather has been ok, nothing to brag about. We have had a few days in the low 70’s, but mostly it’s been peaking in the high 60’s. It has been mostly rainy since Thursday night, it came down hard and fast until Friday morning, then some showers here and there.
Not much else to say.
While walking back from a small hike, Pauline and I heard a group of American Robins crying in alert, the last time we heard this commotion was when we saw the Barred Owl, so we fallowed the noise and sure enough, we once again spotted the Barred Owl.
He was at first just above our heads, we walked right underneath him without seeing him until he took off into the thicker woods, once he did that, the Robins all started to bombard him, it appeared that the owl was even struck a few times, after a minute or two, the owl flew to another tree, and escaped the wraith of the Robins.
We slowly walked to where we could get a good view, and over a 15 minute time frame, we was able to get about 10′ from the tree the owl was in, he was about 12′ high in the tree, lucky for us, the iPhone took a few decent shots.
We plan to start walking in the area we have seen the owl around 8pm to see if we can get some better pictures of it.
We finally received the rock the park ordered 3+ weeks ago. The Rangers was kind enough to have it dumped right across from our Upper Loop Host site, so it was not a long drive to get a bucket full of rock like it was when we was at Fort Flagler.
However, I would have much rather have either one of the tractors Fort Flagler has over the one South Whidbey has. Its a powerful muscle, but it struggled to do the “fine tuning” I would like to have done better.
But it still got the job done.
I did the best I could do, but the tractor didn’t make it as easy as it could have. It’s older, and it felt like the controls were backwards compared to the other tractors I’ve used, but again, it got the job done.
I’m worn out and tired.
We had a really long day, so I really do not have much to say, but at least we got to see our first Barred Owl.
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Posted in State Parks, what hell kind of animals are we seeing?, what the hell are we seeing?, what the hell kind of pictures are these?