birds

Cape Meares, Oregon

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On my trip to Oregon last month, I was eager to visit the coast, and chose Cape Meares as the destination for a day trip. Although Cape Meares is best known for its offshore nesting bird colonies, it’s also lovely in the winter. We hiked a short trail from the lighthouse, through old growth, and then toodled on down the coast to Netarts and along the Tillamook River to check out the winter sights.

All of the below photos were taken on my seven-year-old Yashica T4, which I still love and am relying on again during this time of waiting for my Konica to come back from the shop.


Three Arches Rock, from the trail.


Cavity in a tree stump.


Snow on the trail.


Walking between huge old trees.

View of the ocean, from the trail.


Snow-covered moss on a tree trunk.


Trail, on the way back down.


Last view of the ocean, before heading back to the lighthouse.


Beach at Netarts.

Cape Meares, Oregon

Irish geese

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no geese beyond this point

Much as my trip to Chincoteague Island consisted largely of sightings of shorebirds, my trip to Ireland was populated by geese. In going back through the photos, in order to update my lifelist with the Irish birds, I came across dozens of photos of geese. At the time, we weren’t entirely sure what we were looking at, so the photos were meant as a tool to confirm our identifications once we returned home and had more time.

Now that I have more time, I have indeed been able to confirm the identifications and created a table for the birds I saw in Ireland. None of the birds are particularly rare, but they were all new to me at the time and exciting to see. I have to admit, traveling to a part of the world with different indigenous species than at home was a great way to both boost the list of birds I’ve seen and make me feel good about my identification skills. And, of course, such trips allow me to justify the purchase of field guides specific to the area. In Dublin, I acquired both Irish Birds and the Collins guide for Britain and Europe.

I continue to go back to the pond each day hoping to find new ducks and geese migrating through here, but so far I’ve only seen flocks of Canada geese, nothing new.

Irish geese

catching up with the local pond

girl, ,

I didn’t know when we bought this house that I would be getting a local pond as part of the package, and I count myself very lucky.

The pond is about a mile from our house, with a paved path encircling it that is about 2/10 of a mile around (it’s a small pond). I’m not sure if it was human-built at one point, or if it was natural. It collects storm water from the main road nearby, and it has a run-off ditch itself, that flows into the nearby creek, which allows it to maintain a constant depth. There is a small island at one end of the pond, where the Mallards nest and the resident Great Blue Heron resides. There aren’t any swallow nesting boxes, a common sight in other ponds like this one, but there are a couple of stakes with netting clustered around them that the turtles use as sunning spots.

Today, a flock of Canada Geese was hanging out, with a lone white goose among them. It could have been a Snow Goose, although we couldn’t see any black on its rear (and from what I could tell, its legs looked slightly more yellow than pink). If not a Snow Goose, it was likely a local domesticated escapee, possibly a Ross’s Goose; it was plenty windy enough last night to have blown over a small goose hutch.

We also saw a single turtle sunning itself on the grass at the edge of the pond. I didn’t have my turtle book with me, but I did bring my little binoculars and was therefore able to see the red patch on the side of its head quite clearly, marking it as a Red-eared Slider (I discovered after looking it up at home in my field guide). It’s a non-indigenous, invasive species locally, but I still enjoyed catching sight of it.

I’m thinking that I should start a turtle lifelist as well, since this is the third new type of turtle I’ve seen at the pond. The first, Mud Turtles, are common, I’d just never seen them before. The second was a Snapping Turtle, which was an exciting find. It took me a while to register that the rock behind the turtle was in fact the shell, and the ‘turtle’ I’d been seeing was only its head.

I hope to get my digital camera repaired soon, so that I can take photos on my visits to the pond. One of these days I’ll stay until dusk, and hopefully catch a flock of geese taking off.

catching up with the local pond