While there are some winter weather days here at the beach that can be pretty spooky, the rest of the time there are a variety of rewards including frequent beautiful sunsets, vistas of distant mountains, and cozy periods of quiet, dense fog as the seasons change. But it’s the plethora of wildlife that is the most special treat. It’s a diverse group of avian, terrestrial and aquatic species that come and go year around and keep life interesting. There are at least thirty three different species of birds alone, many of which are seasonal visitors and some that stay here. While fewer in number, the land creatures are just as much of a presence and, several times a year when tides are particularly low, the intertidal and shallow water creatures are a delight to see. This blog will just address the birds and later ones will talk about the land and water species.
A Wonderful Bird is the Pelican
A wonderful bird is the pelican
His bill will hold more than his belican.
He can take in his beak food enough for a week,
But I'm damned if I can see how the helican
His bill will hold more than his belican.
He can take in his beak food enough for a week,
But I'm damned if I can see how the helican
Dixon Lanire Merrith - "The Pelican"(1910)
I like that poem! While we don’t have any pelicans around Camano, the birds that are here are a continuing source of pleasure. The largest number of birds that stay here are the seagulls with the crows/ravens close behind. There is a squadron of about sixty seagulls, young and old, that make our cove a home. At low tide, they forage on the beach during the day for clams and other nibbles and, most nights, roost on a neighbor’s roof, much to the neighbors chagrin. Their leader is Buggsy Seagull (my name for him) who is a real character and the second in command is Boyd. One flight in the squadron is led by Howard the aviator and another member is The Narcissist, each with distinctive behaviors.
Buggsy rules the roost, so to speak, with an iron hand. When they noisily swarm into the yard to get a stale bread handout, Buggsy goes nuts. He systematically attacks each other gull and drives them out of the yard, sometimes pulling out tail feathers from the intruders. He runs back and forth and won’t even allow the others to stand on the bulkhead. When he has the yard cleared, he struts boldly into the center and looks expectantly toward the deck waiting for the handout. He doesn’t give a second thought if the bread is a little green and depends on his cast iron stomach to deal with it. Boyd is similarly bad tempered but rarely gets to show it while trying to stay out of Buggsy’s way.
There is one exception to Buggsy’s yard-clearing behavior, his “gullfriend” Jezebel who he allows to be in the yard, just not too near. In the spring when Buggsy’s fancy turns to thoughts of love, it’s really cute. He and Jezebel march slowly along the bulkhead side by side, heads bowed way down and talking to each other in a kind of cooing. After strolling back and forth like this a while, if Buggy has successfully talked her into it, Jezebel will stop, half kneel with her tail feathers up in the air and they will mate. The rest is censored!
About a third of the squadron are juveniles as shown by their dark, muddy colored feathers. When they want something to eat, they go up to a mature bird, duck their head down in a supplicating pose and make a small peeping sound as if begging. Sometimes when the mature birds come around, they look toward the deck and beg just like the juveniles if the pickin’s on the beach are slim.
Howard likes to take his meals in the air. He was probably trained by following ferry boats and catching French fries people throw out to him since he makes flying passes and hovers momentarily in front of the deck to catch bread pieces before they hit the ground. If he misses, which is rarely, he simply flies in a big circle and returns for another try.
The Narcissist is more interested in himself than in eating. He marches up to the sliding glass door at the neighbor’s house and stands admiring the bird in the reflection. Sometimes he will tap on the glass with his beak like he is kissing the image.
When foraging on the beach, if one of them finds a clam, the others will try to take it away. The finder will grab the clam in its beak and take off screaming and flying for its life and a literal WW II-style dogfight ensues. Gulls are extremely adept flyers and six times out of ten, after significant aerobatics, the finder sets back down on the beach and proceeds to dispatch the clam. The other four times, they will drop the clam and the pursuer will spiral down and grab it.
Since gulls don’t have thumbs, they have developed an interesting way to get at the clam inside the shell. When disturbed, the clam “clams up” quite strongly and is protected by its shell. The gulls have learned to take the clam up in the air and drop it on the rocky beach to break it open. Equally interesting, the crows have learned the same behavior for getting at their meals. On a low tide day, there is sometimes a virtual ballet of crows and gulls going up and down and being chased.
The gulls are continuously alert to their surroundings, primarily because of the eagles that are present. When they come to the yard for handouts, when on the beach resting or foraging for food, or when roosting on the neighbor’s roof, they are watchful for the eagles. It’s possible they even have a designated lookout.
There are several tall eagle perch trees on the bluff behind the house and if one is present, the gulls will continuously cock their head for optimum viewing to watch the eagle. Whenever an eagle is flying past, all the gulls take off in a noisy flight since they apparently feel more protected while airborne. Sometimes, when an eagle is perched in the tree, the crows will dive bomb it screeching all the while. They must be kamikaze but I’m still waiting for the eagle to react. An occasional osprey also comes by and bedevils the gulls but normally doesn’t stay around long. At the extreme low tides in the late spring and summer, as many as four eagles may be seen down on the beach walking on the muddy shore looking for food. Once, an eagle was making repeated dives in front of the house at something in the water. Each diving pass caused a duck to go under water and drove it closer to the beach. When the water became too shallow for the duck to dive, the eagle snatched it and dispatched it on the beach. Yet another time, a mother eagle was standing by a small creek close to the house apparently teaching the two juveniles with her to fish.
A prominent little blue neighbor is the kingfisher. His distinguishing features are a large beak and a tuft of feathers on his head like an unruly hairdo. Many mornings he will be sitting on the bulkhead or flagpole jabbering away in a continuous diatribe about something. He will take off in a rapid flight circling out over the water looking for a fish and abruptly pull up into hovering flight, often repeating the hover multiple times. If he spots a fish, he will fold his wings and plummet down headfirst in a speed dive and plunge kerplunk into the water making a big splash. It would seem that the impact would knock him silly but up he bobs, often with a small fish in his beak which he will carry to the beach or an exposed rock and proceed with his meal.
A pair of tufted great blue herons frequent the cove. A larger, long-legged wading bird with a large beak, they will patiently fish in the shallows, moving in slow motion all the while. If they spy a fish, they will slowly lower their head near the water surface and draw their neck back like a snake poising to strike. With the fish in their sights, they stab in a flash. More often than not their effort is successful and the fish is toast! The herons are also wary of the eagles but, on rare occasions, may share a low-tide stretch of beach at some distance apart.
In the wintertime, a large flotilla of ducks of several species returns to the cove. At any one time, there may be a hundred or more collectively in “family” groups of a few to 30-40 birds. The families include scoters, harlequins, occasional mergansers, goldeneyes, crested cormorants, loons, scaups, buffleheads, horned and western grebes, several different surfbirds and the oddly -named pigeon guillemots that live in holes in the bank above the cove.
Over the course of the year, many other birds visit including owls, doves, terns, flickers, an assortment of sparrows and chickadees, one of my favorites - hummingbirds, and a killdeer mother that has nested here for the last three years. Her annual brood of 4-6 babies are really cute to see running all around the vacant lot next door.
Always something interesting to see at the beach!
