Swans!!!

Today was an absolutely glorious day!  I had the good fortune of getting to spend at least 3 hours, if not more, out in the sunshine.

If you can see it at all it probably looks like dirt on the camera lens, but there were 20 or 30 Bald Eagles in a big ‘kettle’ at this point, in fact the eagles appeared to be enjoying the day as much as the humans were!

I’ve zoomed in on those mountains in the distance because they had the season’s first dusting of snow…

out on the flats there weren’t quite as many eagles as some days, partly due to a boat that cruised in awfully close and sent a lot of them flying..

Ducks were everywhere!  Here a bunch of Mallards dozing in the sun…couldn’t get a picture, but just across from these guys were 4 Northern Pintail…a duck species we don’t see too often…

a few Gadwall (male in the lead)

and at least a hundred or more, American Wigeon.  Also present were a number of Green Wing Teal..

but the most exciting find of the day were the first Trumpeter Swans of the season!  (as an aside, look carefully at this picture…besides Swans, ducks, eagles and gulls there are at least 6 and possibly 8 fisherman lined up along the banks of this little stretch of river)

Speaking of looking carefully – there is an American Robin in the above picture…the bushes along the trail were almost as busy as the flats…Fox Sparrow, Towhee, Pacific Wren, Song Sparrow, a flock of Bushtits, a bigger flock of Pine Sisken…it just went on and on….

There were several Great Blue Heron, this being the one that has been seen on a daily basis…

and I’ll leave you with another Swan picture….I should mention too that a few postings back I mentioned the possibility of a small gull that I had seen maybe being a Bonaparte…we’ll today a birder with more gull expertise than I, confirmed the sighting of 2 Bonaparte Gulls…so another confirmed species for the Chehalis Estuary.