Yes or SNOW?

Friday, December 15, we drove through deep, green canyons of trees on Redwood Highway, then over to the Willamette Valley, where all the deciduous trees looked like they had been flocked, not with fake snow, but with gray green lichen. Every flag at half-mast was a jolting reminder of the tragedy in Connecticut. We stayed in Port Angeles that night.

Saturday, December 16, there were several Long-Tailed Ducks in the Port Angeles Harbor. The ferry ride across to Victoria was smooth. :-) We drove up the 17 to a spot where a Sky Lark had been seen. Not by us. John got pictures of the Northwest Crow 684 and the Trumpeter Swan 685. He had seen swans in Wisconsin and Minnesota. He preferred counting the species where it hadn't been re-introduced. Then we needed to get up to Courtenay before dark to see the Citrine Wagtail. We got to the spot. There were people there with a scope! Grab cold gear, jump out of the car! They had the bird, but kept on losing it in the rutted field. It started raining and the wind came up. COLD! John had to go back for more gear. When he got back, the people had relocated the bird and John got on it with his high-powered binoculars. He saw the behavior, the coloring and the white wing patches. 686 The other birders were from Victoria and gave us some hints about where to, maybe, successfully see the Sky Lark. More wind, more rain, we left.

Off to a steak house to celebrate, the rain turned to lovely fluffy snow. By the time we grabbed the check and left, there was about 3 inches of snow for me to slide/drive through on the way back to the hotel. After a safe arrival, we had a little snowball fight.

John has been in several snow storms already this year. 8 inches in Newfoundland, 6 in San Diego County CA, 4 in Minneapolis MN, 3 in Portal AZ and 4 in Colorado, plus flakes here and there. That fresh snow compacts and melts a bit under the car tires. Slippery! When we wake up tomorrow, will we be snowed in?

tick, tick, tickity tick

John spent the last two days in Wisconsin. Thursday night, June 21st, he counted 9 ticks. Friday night, June 22nd, he had counted 24 by the time I had called him. He always tucks his pants into his socks so he hasn't gotten bitten....yet. Many others are probably crawling around inside the rental car. EWWW! Here I sit, tickless, in Southern California, while John struggles to find birds on his own.

Thursday, notable were pics of Chestnut-Sided Warbler and Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker. He definitely heard a Connecticut Warbler too. He also discovered that when he uses my IPhone to review bird songs and returns it to his pocket, sometimes the program spontaneously plays a fragment of a song, fooling him into thinking he has heard the bird. But he can tell. The song is too perfect, not repeated, and not complete. Brief, false hope.

The other tool John uses a lot is Birdseye. The phone app mines EBird and maps the sightings of a target bird near to John's location. Doesn't mean he will see it, but gets him closer. Thanks, everyone who contributes to EBird.

Friday, he saw about 24 Trumpeter Swans, another conservation success story. He is staying overnight in Duluth, then, Saturday, he will head to Sax-Zim, where we attended a festival in February.

On his own, John has spent two days in Wisconsin, and will spend two days each in Minnesota, South Dakota, and Colorado. He will join Melody Kehl in Arizona for a trip into California Gulch June 29th, spend a few more days there and head home to Southern California. We will have been apart two months.