16 September

 16 Sept 

eBird data: https://ebird.org/checklist/S94743009

Weather:  7:30 am 7C, wind W4,  12 m 14C, wind ENE 11 Clear

Tide:  9:30  am 1.2m, rising

One of the best days I can remember here in the Estuary, which is saying a lot.  Brilliantly clear, crisp weather, and an assortment of critters. 

 




The morning began with a little commotion in the reeds along the channel that runs along the west side of the fields.  Sure enough, although I never managed a photo, it was a marsh wren.  I don't see them often here, but it's certainly their kind of environment.

The snow was all but vanished from the Arrowsmith massif, although there is in fact a forecast of snow in higher elevations on the Island today.


The tide was very low, and the Salish Sea had calmed from the night before, when I could hear surf throughout the night.


Great blue herons are anything but a rarity here, but this one was posing quite nicely, so I took a picture.


There are beginning to be flocks of ducks appearing along the coast, usually too far out to be identified, but they do tell me that the migration is beginning.

The other migration, fish, is also beginning.  There was concern that the water levels in the Englishman River were so low that the salmon might not manage to make their way upstream, but:


...there had to be at least 50 of what I take to have been chinooks, schooled here, I'd guess awaiting a rise in the tide.  They were big--at least a foot and a half long. The seals also seem persuaded that the salmon are in the river, and they've been fishing for a lot of generations.  They ought to know.

Making my way back I met up with a man who had been photographing a great horned owl.  I couldn't see the owl, but continued along my walk.  I paused, trying to photograph a tiny Anna's hummingbird and borage flowers.  


It didn't result in much of a photo, but I became aware of a strange call from the nearby forest.  It wasn't one I knew.


On looking up from the borage, there were two young great horned owls, both doing their begging call.  One disappeared into the forest, but this one was most obliging.  On reading up great horned, the young owls persist in the begging note into September.  So there they were.  I wouldn't have spotted them but for the hummer and the borage.  

It was indeed a fine day, followed by the first real storm of the season on Friday.  




 




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