Katrina's Travels

I've had enough of all coronavirus news all the time. I declared a moratorium on paying attention to it today. Instead it is time for another segment of my November trip report. Having finally made it across the mountains to the west side of Washington in my last post, this one starts out at my uncle's house in Lacey on November 13.

I wanted to get up and out early in the morning but my cousin N. wanted to join me and she's not an early riser. (As far as I know, none of my Washington family are early risers. Getting people related to my mother to get up and moving in the morning is difficult or impossible.) We did eventually get out of the house and headed over to Billy Frank Jr. Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge. We stopped at the refuge store where we borrowed binoculars for my cousin then went for a walk. The weather was overcast and gray but not actively raining. (November is not the right time to go to western Washington if you want to see the sun.)

This is the marshy area behind the office/store building. There were a few ducks and a heron there, but not much going on in comparison to my past visits.




( More scenery )


I took photos of birds, of course.

An immature Northern Shrike was hanging out on a dead snag out in the marsh. It was a long way away, so my photos aren't great. It eventually flew over the path and into the area on the other side of it, but my efforts to get a photo when it was closer came to naught.




Cackling Geese



( More birds )

Afterward we went back to my uncle's house. I let him talking me into going out to a "quick inexpensive lunch" with him. It was around 4 PM and the place we went was actually a fairly expensive seafood restaurant on the water front. He was right that it was possible to get a relatively inexpensive meal of clam chowder there, but overall it was not cheap. Once we were there he told me to go ahead and order whatever I wanted, which ended up being halibut with mango salsa. Halibut is one of my favorite fishes to eat and I never get to have it at home so I do try to eat it when I'm in Washington. It was really, really good.

I had a nice comfy and quiet room at the Motel 6 in Yakima. I didn't realize it when I checked, but when I looked at where I was in the morning, I had the room on the second floor that that was over top of the office and not connected to anything on either side, so no noisy neighbors. The hotel was in the middle of a commercial district with nothing but other big buildings in sight so no hotel view photo this time. There was a California Scrub-Jay in a tree near my room though, and it was cooperative about having its picture taken.




There are several species of scrub-jay. The California Scrub-Jay is the one that is found in the coastal areas of the west coast. It used to be mostly in California but it moved north to Oregon and Washington. Woodhouse's Scrub-Jay is the inland western species. When I heard the jay at the hotel, I was hoping it was a Woodhouse's because I haven't seen one of those in several decades, if I've seen them at all. (I've been too lazy to check my records on where I saw scrub-jays when I was young and they were all considered to be a single species.) But no, the inland scrub-jays in Washington are the California species. The coastal species moved inland there rather than the inland species from the south moving north.


I wanted to stretch my legs for a while before spending the day driving so I went over to the nearby Yakima Greenway and spent about an hour wandering around there.




The main trail is paved and I suspect it is on an old railway bed. The stretch I walked on goes along the Naches River and there were some ponds/small lakes on the other side of the trail. I saw a variety of common western birds there.







( More photos )

The mammals were the stars at Turnbull NWR, but the birds were interesting too. I didn't see very many different species of birds, but most of the ones I saw were different from what I see at home.

This is a Pygmy Nuthatch. There were a number of them in the pine trees along the entrance road. They're hard to photograph because they don't sit still.



( Another view of a nuthatch )


A Hairy Woodpecker - this is one that I do see at home.




There are three Northern Flickers in this tree. They are the western, Red-shafted variety rather than the Yellow-shafted variety we have at home.




( Closer views of flickers )


This Northern Shrike was pretty much the last bird I saw there. I occasionally see one of these shrikes at home in the winter, but they're more a bird of northern places and only rarely show up where I live. I saw at least three of them while I was in Washington.



( More shrike photos )

Other birds that I saw included Black-capped and Mountain Chickadees, a Marsh Wren, Mallards, American Wigeon, and Red-tailed Hawks. I'm probably forgetting a few others.

Continuing on with photos of the scenery at Turnbull NWR....

Another spot where I stopped to take a walk was Kepple Lake, where I walked down a path/road that went through the pine trees on one side of the lake.



( Kepple Lake and more pine trees )


A little further down the road there was a trail that made a loop on the Kepple Pennisula, on the other side of Kepple Lake.

There was a beaver lodge but I didn't see any more beavers there than I saw at the first place where I saw their evidence.



( More from the Kepple Penninsula )


Next came the Blackhorse Lake Boardwalk Trail and the other end of the Blackhorse Lake Trail which was featured in part 2 of this report.




( A few more photos )

This was the point where I ran out of time and had to get going.

Coming up next, Turnbull's mammals.