We get skunked at Stillwater; have great time anyway

20 Feb We get skunked at Stillwater; have great time anyway

Delia and I and a friend went out to the Snoqualmie Valley to the Stillwater Wildlife Management Area to see if we could add to our state-bird-year-list today.

Turns out, we couldn’t.  Our list is at 92, a mid-Feb total that’s paltry by serious WA Bird-lister standards, but enough so that everything we saw today was already on it.  But the day was golden anyway.

Here we are at Fall City.  It’s amazing the shots you can take out of a speeding car window these days. (There’s no sidewalk on this side of the bridge).  That’s the Snoqualmie River. Of course I was on a painting-idea hunt also.

This Spotted Towhee seemed curious about what we were up to.  I like the look of this shot but for a Towhee photo to be good, the bird’s got to be flashing alot more tail.

It was a beautiful day in a gorgeous area.  This is the trail that parallels the Redmond Duvall highway at Stillwater.

This was one of the scenes that captivated our friend Sherry Lee Lauf and she decided to do some pleinaire painting while me and Delia kept birding.

Buffleheads are common but extremely beautiful.  This shot, unfortunately, doesn’t near do the bird justice.  Their high-contrast plumage outwits the casual shooter like me, even when I get the help from a smart  camera.

We got back to Sherry (in red) who had nearly finished this great painting.  She promised to email me where her next show would be for the month of April and I’ll add it to this blog soon.

As the sky grew dark, we ran into this Beaver in a slough.  It’s not translating here, but this was a big Beaver.   Another one showed up and did the tail-slap.  Earlier we had a first-of-the-year sighting of a Garter Snake.

We headed out of the beautiful Snoqualmie Valley as the light leaving Mt. Si afforded us yet another breathtaking view.  We were still at 92, but we’d had a great day!