Pacific flyway

Along the Pacific coast, April is a great time to watch sandpipers in breeding plumage.  They have long migrations to complete, and need to stop to feed along the way.  Today, I went out to see which species were present.

The beach was pretty deserted.  In about an hour of walking I saw only 3 other people, but hundreds of sandpipers.

The beach

Whimbrels

Black-bellied plovers

A semi-palmated plover (in the foreground)

Mostly western sandpipers

Dunlins (with black bellies) mixed in with western sandpipers

Spring cleaning

This afternoon, in preparation to defrost the freezer, I was washing out a cooler that had spent the winter outside.  The cooler had filled with rain water, and had a population of small earthworms inside it.  After I dumped out the cooler,  I scrubbed it with Simple Green solution.  Then I picked up one of our watering cans, and used it to deliver water to rinse the cooler.  After I refilled the watering can, I poured some water into the cooler and was quite startled to see a tree frog pop out of the spout.  I don't know whether the frog was more surprised than I was.  But it hung around long enough for me to take some photos of it.  I released in into more appropriate habitat.

Happy Spring!

Pacific treefrog

With my fingers for a size comparison