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A very low tide Saturday (4/19/14) prompted my son and me to walk the beach south from Marina Park towards Pt. Wells in search of eagles. The eagles take advantage of the extreme low tides by hunting for fish and crabs trapped in the tidal pools.
To my suprise we saw no eagles, but a few killdeer made an appearance.
A kingfisher was perched on the piling where we usually see the Pt. Wells eagles.
I don't know how a gull can eat a starfish without choking, but I have seen many of them do it.
It was the day before Easter and these beach combers appeared to be walking on water.
The piling on the left is where the Pt. Edwards eagles usually perch at Marina Park. Due to the low tide, it was barely in the water.
From Sunset Avenue I have seen several eagles out on the Shell Creek spit during this week of low tides. Here is a juvie.
The Brant continue to gather along the beaches in Edmonds. One day they will all vanish as they continue their migration north.
A sub adult was at the Shell Creek spit, then flew south very low over Second Ave., a block to my east. It looks like the same bird I have been photographing around town this winter and spring. As a sub adult, I doubt it has a regular territory staked out like our resident breeding pairs.
Even evil minions of the Dark Lord can have affectionate moments, as witnessed by two of them perched on the fence of the outdoor tennis courts next to the marsh Thursday (4/24/14) morning. Need I say that the morning light was horrible?
Sunday evening I got my first of the year (FOY in birder parlance) shot of a Caspian tern off Sunset Ave. The Caspian tern is one of my favorite birds, both for its looks and its providing many summer photo ops once the winter migrants have left town and our local eagles have taken off to wherever they spend mid August through mid October.
As (bad) luck would have it, the tern flew by while I was setting up for a train shot with my 7D + 24-105L medium range zoom. The tern was close enough that I still got a halfway decent shot.
A moment later a local juvie bald eagle flew by. I ran to get my 5DIII + 100-400L + 1.4x teleconverter which I had placed on a nearby bench. Although it flew fairly close to me, it was horribly backlit.
I managed to retrieve the 7D in time to get shots of the train, a five car Sounder Mariners special heading back to Everett from Seattle. All aboard must have been very happy as the Mariners came from behind to beat the Texas Rangers.
Tuesday (4/29/14) was sunny and the water in Puget Sound was quite calm. These three (unusual?) conditions combined to make it easy to track a pigeon guillemot underwater as it dove near the fishing pier.
Wednesday (4/30) my son and I hit the usual spots in nearby Lynnwood. First stop was Scriber Lake, where we caught a Bewick's wren singing up a storm. The Bewick's wren is very loud for its size and we could hear this bird from across the lake.
Next stop was Mini Park, where several waterfowl were swimming in Sprague Pond. A beautiful male wood duck was in the pond when we pulled up, but it disappeared before I got out of the car. I did catch the female.
Sprague pond is the only local place where I stand a good shot at seeing ring-necked ducks.
Back in Edmonds, I caught three Eurasian collard doves. The next door neighbor told me that the doves had been hanging around house for several days. According to Sibley's, it is an introduced species spreading throughout the US.
Two were on the roof.
And one was in the grass. Unlike the two on the roof, it had black spots on its its feathers and no black ring on the back of its neck. Juvenile??? Correction: A birder viewing my photos has identified this as a mourning dove.
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