Winter Vacation II

Posted at 10:54 AM, Sunday, February 24, 2008

On Tuesday, we drove north from Pacific City to Cannon Beach, looking for as many birds as possible in the bays along the way.



Our first stop was Sand Lake where we had our best look ever of a white-winged scoter and spotted a female common goldeneye.



Next, we hit Netarts Bay, my favorite, and it did not disappoint. We spotted a big raft of surf scoters, many more goldeneyes, plenty of common loons, pelagic cormorants, and a resplendent male harlequin duck.



We then drove up to Cape Meares and spotted several huge flocks of common murres, birds we usually don’t see in the winter. We walked down to the lighthouse to show Andie the great view and spotted the resident pair of peregrine falcons overhead.



The next stop was Tillamook Bay where Sarah took this great photo of  a heron. We drove along the entire bay and found a raft of brant, lesser and greater scaup, a tiny eared grebe, and a few canvasbacks.



At the north jetty, we marveled at the speed with which the tide water cruised out of the bay. Just north of the jetty, we spotted a black scoter bobbing in the surf. Our first life bird of 2008!



Our last stop was Nehalem Bay. As usual we did not see as many birds here, but we did notice many logs and stumps deposited by the last floods. We also saw a few more loons and gulls, and watched a happy golden retriever chase away a pair of Mallards.

We trucked on to Cannon Beach where more adventures waited. These will be shared in the next post.