Our Golden Gate Audubon Birding Group spent a full day at the northern edge of the Olympic Peninsula. Looking across the waster we could see Vancouver Island, just a short ferry boat ride away in Canada. And the bird of the day was the Harlequin, as we tracked many pairs and a few competing males along the shore of Ediz Hook in Port Angeles.
What a bird: white piping separates each color patch of a natural montage that includes some crimson on the side (not easily seen here in the dim light of a very cloud sky), a teal triangle above the waterline at the shoulder and a rust eyebrow line just behind the bold white face mask.
There were plenty of other fine bird moments: many Long-tailed Ducks, a bevy of Black-bellied Plover, some imperturbable Dunlin working mudflats, the world’s heaviest flying birds working plowed carrot fields (Trumpeters), a mated pair of Red-breasted Sapsuckers along the Olympic Discover Trail in Sequim.
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