One month down

 With the last day of January, we were reminded that winter isn't finished with us, in fact we are barely half way through!

it was snowing lightly.....

yet the Red-wing Blackbirds made it sound like spring.

in the afternoon we walked over at Harrison Bay, and spotted....

a Peregrine Falcon - based on the colouring, a young one.

there were a lot of American Wigeon, but a few Eurasian as well.  Eurasian have a rust coloured head with a yellow stripe - there is one right at the back of this bunch and another right at the left.

there were Canada Geese scattered all over.  This one was with a couple of Northern Pintails and a Mallard.

It has actually been quite quiet for birds the last little while...

although while exploring the new trail system the other day, we came across

another American Dipper, but even more exciting was the spotting of .....

a Bobcat!

there are still Bald Eagles around, more young ones than adults these days.  The resident pairs are all hanging out close to their nests.

January moving along

 January is moving along rapidly!  It has been a pretty quiet, yet typical month.  Most days are kind of grey and cloudy, a few have been really wet, but most days we've been able to get out.

this is pretty typical of the weather, although right now the mountain tops are sporting fresh snow again.

There are still some Bald Eagles in the area, more young ones than adults

although there has been activity at all 3 of the visible nests.

Great Blue Heron are gathering in larger numbers, something they seem to do this time of the year before they head off to start nest building in another 6 weeks or so.

There hasn't been much variety in he waterfowl.  Mainly just Mallards and not even that many of them.

Song birds have been very quiet and sparse....

although we are still seeing some Robins, in fact some days we've seen quite a few of them.

Eurasian Collared Doves seem to be gathering together now as well.

Anna's Hummingbird males seem to be back out staking out territories.  Females are most likely nesting now.

One, not so common sighting...

was of a Northern Shrike.

What we are seeing quite regularly are members of the woodpecker family....

especially the little Downy Woodpeckers - there seem to be a lot of them around right now.

at the other end of the size factor is the large Pileated Woodpecker, also seen fairly often.

a hopeful sign today that the season is moving along, was this Song Sparrow, up and staking territory.

Speaking of 'territory', thanks to a new trail system under construction, we have been exploring another section of the IBA/WMA

called the Chehalis Fishing Trail, it follows the Chehalis River..

Chehalis River viewpoint

at the present time this is the turn around point (Coho Salmon in the water), but plans are for a bridge at this point so the trail will continue on...

seen along the way, an American Dipper swimming - I've seen them wading under water before, but never swimming on the surface.

Sounds like we may get a return to winter in the next week or so, we shall see how it goes.

Uneventful start to the year

 So far, it has been a pretty uneventful start to the year. 

December's snow has pretty much disappeared....  

the big influx of Bald Eagles is over....

of course we always have a few eagles around.....

and there are still Trumpeter Swans, some times more, sometimes less.  Yesterday one of the fields in the Kilby area had a large flock, today, none.

We are beginning to wonder where all the regular birds are though....

we've seen some Steller's Jay

and you can usually find a Great Blue Heron somewhere...

but the little guys, like Song Sparrows, Fox Sparrows, Junco's, Towhee's, even Chickadee's are few and far between.

there do seem to be quite a few woodpeckers, like this Downy and we've seen some Hairy as well.

One of the problems is that there is absolutely no fruit left on any of the native Pacific Crabapples or Black Hawthorn.  It seems those Robins that hung around in large numbers for so long, have simply stripped everything bare.  

As usual, we will just have to wait and see how things play out going forward.