Overcast with temperatures in the 30s. Light winds.
Snow last night was sufficient to leave the ground covered in a thin layer of white, but there was no significant accumulation in my neighborhood.
I decided to head out late this morning hoping to get to Starrigavan while the tide was still low enough for me to look for more of the barnacles with the possible seaweed growing on them.
I was too late for the beach, enjoyed the scenery. More snow had fallen out that way.
Horned Grebe with fish - probably a kelp pipefish
At Kerr’s Island I spotted a Horned Grebe. It had caught a fish. It was very thin, almost hair-like. I suspect it was a kelp pipefish (Syngnathus californiensis).
From Halibut Point rec I spotted a small dark alcid far out. I’m pretty confident it was a Rhinoceros Auklet. I think even at that distance the Tufted Puffin bill would have looked a bit bigger.
At the Kelp Patch pullout a (the?) Horned Puffin popped up while I was watching.
Thirty or so White-winged Scoters well out from Sea Mart were the most I’ve seen this winter.
I didn't see anyone on Picnic Rock, but I could see a trail through the fresh snow
I realized that earlier this month was my 20th anniversay of the first post in this blog format. I had been doing photojournal sorts of things for several years, but that was all done with static pages that I manually created indexes for. When I started experimenting with blog format in 2003, I tended to write a flurry of several short entries, often in a single day. I might then go long weeks (or months) without posting. It was 2006 before I moved to WordPress and tried to develop consistency around posting. In 2007 I merged my older photojournal approach into blogging format.
My iNaturalist Observations for Today
