Notes from a slow morning at Nisqually
Four hours, thirty-one species, and nothing rare. A defence of the ordinary morning, which is most of them.
Billy Frank Jr. Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge, 14 August, 6:40am to 10:50am. Overcast, 14°C, no wind to speak of. Tide going out through the morning, which is the useful direction.
Thirty-one species. Nothing you would drive for.
The list, roughly in order
The parking lot did its usual job: Song Sparrow before the engine had stopped, Spotted Towhee scratching somewhere invisible, a Bewick’s Wren going off like an alarm clock in the blackberries. Two Black-capped Chickadees, a Downy Woodpecker, and the first of about nine American Robins.
The boardwalk out through the freshwater marsh was quiet in the way that means you are early rather than the way that means nothing is there. Marsh Wren calling but not showing. A Virginia Rail did the grunting thing twice and then declined to do anything further. Common Yellowthroat, one male, still in decent plumage.
Out at the estuary the tide had dropped enough to expose mud, which is where the morning actually started.
Shorebirds: Least Sandpiper in a loose group of about forty, Western Sandpiper mixed in, and it took an embarrassing amount of time to be sure about the split. Greater Yellowlegs, four, doing their nervous thing. One Short-billed Dowitcher that I called on structure and bill length and would not defend hard.
Herons: eleven Great Blue Herons visible at once from the observation platform, standing at wide intervals like they had been placed there. A single Great Egret at the back, which is still slightly novel this far north.
Raptors: Northern Harrier quartering low, one adult Bald Eagle sitting on a snag not doing much, and a Peregrine Falcon that went through fast enough to put every shorebird in the air at once. That was the moment of the morning and it lasted about eight seconds.
What was not there
No Sandhill Cranes yet. No Cackling Geese. Both are three or four weeks out. The warbler passage was thin: Yellow Warbler and Common Yellowthroat and that was it, when a good mid-August morning here can produce five or six species.
Which is worth writing down. “What was absent” is half the value of a list, and it is the half people leave out because it does not feel like data. It is data. Three years of mid-August lists from the same site is how you find out that the shorebird peak has drifted, and no single morning tells you anything at all.
The point about slow mornings
Nothing rare happened. Nobody was going to post about this on a rare bird alert. And it was a genuinely good four hours, because the Peregrine flush happened, and because I finally have Western versus Least Sandpiper sorted in my head in a way I did not on Tuesday.
The rare bird is not the return on birding. It is a bonus that arrives occasionally and unpredictably. The return is that the ordinary morning gets richer every time you have one, because you are seeing more of what is in front of you than you were last time.
Thirty-one species. No rarities. Back next month.