Sunny skies this morning, with clouds building through the day.
The clouds started with a thin high haze overhead by late morning, but thickened and differentiated a bit into the evening.
Temperatures overnight cooled sufficiently for ice to form on the water in buckets around my house. They warmed to the upper 40s during the day.
On a brief stop by the channel, I took a look at the gulls, but didn’t see any. I heard about Long-tailed Ducks heard in the area recently, but I’ve not yet seen any show up in the channel.
Kitty and I went most of the way up Harbor Mountain road before turning around between the third gate and the next switchback. At that elevation there were little bits of snow on the ground here and there. I was a little surprised how many other cars we passed. Presumably folks taking advantage of what might end up being the last nice (weekend) day with the gates open.
We stopped at the undeveloped Kramer Avenue/Cross Trail junction to go for a bit of a walk.
We had not walked far when I noticed a junco or two fly across the trail in front of us. One of the birds I got just a glimpse of had the white outer tail feathers of a junco, but seemed much more (or paler) brown than I would expect for a junco. It gave me pause, and I decided to pish a bit.
A junco and a sparrow-like brown bird about the size of a junco popped up to see what was going on. I spotted the mystery bird on a hemlock branch just beyond the alders growing on the margin of the path. Unfortunately, I did not manage to get an in focus picture of it before it flew. (Much to my frustration.)
We did see roughly where it flew to, but were not able to relocate it again.
I am not sure what it was. It reminded me a bit of the Rustic Bunting that was here a couple of years ago, but I would be surprised if it was that. There’s a chance that it was a fairly typical species for here, but I think I would have recognized it, if so.
We walked for a bit longer, and I kept my eyes and ears open. We did cross paths with a couple other juncos, Steller’s Jays, a Hermit Thrush, and Varied Thrushes, but never had any indication of the mystery bird.
We headed back around 2pm in so Kitty could make it to a meeting.
I grabbed some food and went back out again.
I spent the an hour and a half or so wandering around.
I mostly stayed on the main trail, but also explored a couple of the side trails. It’s a bit more of a maze than I realized (but not a complicated one).
I have not spent much time on Kramer Avenue, though it seems to be a popular walking route based on the number of people I saw today.
At one point I saw what I thought was frost still on the leaves of plants. I was a little surprised, but initially figured it was a spot that didn’t get any sun and stayed cool.
Closer investigation revealed it was actually tiny little water droplets on the hairs of the aven (Geum macrophyllum) leaves. I suspect they were formed when the frost melted, and without any wind or sun in this protected pocket, they persisted.
This evening I played ultimate with a good turnout of a folks. By this time it was overcast, so we lost our light quickly after the sunset.
I actually got off to a slow start today. I had stayed up late last night. I considered going out for the moonset (which was to happen just after 2am). In the end, I did go to bed after midnight with the thought that I might get up if I woke up in time. As it turned out, I did wake up, but just went back to sleep. I had minor regrets, as I would have been curious to see the setting moon, but it’s probably good that I got the sleep.
My iNaturalist Observations for Today
