{"id":113,"date":"2011-12-31T13:44:11","date_gmt":"2011-12-31T21:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.redalderranch.com\/?p=113"},"modified":"2011-12-31T13:48:00","modified_gmt":"2011-12-31T21:48:00","slug":"christmas-bird-count-by-kayak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.redalderranch.com\/?p=113","title":{"rendered":"Christmas bird count by kayak"},"content":{"rendered":"

I think it was the winter of 2005 when I first went out with Andrew for the Wahkiakum County Christmas Bird Count<\/a>, and I’ve done it nearly every year ever since. I usually paddle the section of the count circle that is lower on the river, in the Lewis and Clark National Wildlife Refuge<\/a>. It’s usually a very cold, and sometimes stormy kayak trip. This year was no exception. <\/p>\n

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\n\"Christmas<\/a>
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I set off from Skamokawa around 10:30 in the morning, and paddled out into a strong ebb tide, with a lot of extra runoff pouring out of the mouth of the creek. It was almost instantly windy and rainy, and I saw almost no birds for the first couple of miles crossing the river.<\/p>\n

When I got to Woody Island I was ready for a break from trying to look at birds from a kayak that was getting tossed around in the wind and waves, and I pulled out for a half hour or so, had some tea and a Clif bar, dried my freezing hands and put on gloves. I usually don’t use pogies<\/a>, since I’ve mostly used a Greenland stick for years, but lately I’ve been using my bent shaft Werner, and I sure was wishing I had pogies now! <\/p>\n

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\n\"Christmas<\/a>
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I had planned to paddle down the west side of the refuge islands, but the wind was just too heavy for decent birdwatching, and I finally gave up and moved to the inside of the islands. That didn’t take me out of the wind completely, but it cut it way down, and I could finally set my paddle down without having it blown away.<\/p>\n

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\n\"Christmas<\/a>
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My last stop was on Karlson Island, where Andrew hoped that I would be able to climb up on top of the old dike and find a treasure trove of birds in the large field inside the dike. Years ago, someone hit the jackpot here, so I gave it a try again. Sadly, this spot was nearly devoid of bird life. I found a dozen mourning doves and a Fox sparrow, and that was it. I did find a sizable congregation of coots, though, inside the little channel next to the dike. <\/p>\n

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\n\"Christmas<\/a>
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\n\"Christmas<\/a>
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Numbers wise, this wasn’t a great bird count year for me, personally. I only got 28 species, and there were quite a few that I was expecting to see that I did not. And my position as Scaup<\/a> Sighting Champion, which I’ve held for several years running, was taken away from me. Last year I counted almost 7000 Scaup, this year, only 1020. <\/p>\n

But I did see more White Winged Scoters<\/a> than I have ever seen before, and I think my Coot count was the highest I’ve ever had, too. And I saw the Tundra Swans, and a few Ruddy Ducks, which I don’t get every year.<\/p>\n

I pulled up to the Knappa Docks in Oregon at about 3 PM, just as another squall hit, nearly taking away my paddle again. Twenty minutes later it was back to flat calm, as I loaded up the kayak on the car. All in all, a nice winter paddle.<\/p>\n

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\n\"Christmas<\/a>
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think it was the winter of 2005 when I first went out with Andrew for the Wahkiakum County Christmas Bird Count, and I’ve done it nearly every year ever since. I usually paddle the section of the count circle that is lower on the river, in the Lewis and Clark National Wildlife Refuge. It’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,40],"tags":[389,250,8,34,405,390,391,411],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.redalderranch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.redalderranch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.redalderranch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.redalderranch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.redalderranch.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=113"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/blog.redalderranch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":126,"href":"http:\/\/blog.redalderranch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions\/126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.redalderranch.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.redalderranch.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.redalderranch.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}