Birding Today #5

Easter afternoon, birding with my son and my best birding buddy, as a prelude to a fabulous vegan Easter dinner. Recipe for a great day.

Today my son and I met Ken and set out to look for the Blue Jay that has been in the Long Lake area of Kitsap County for several months. The real reason for getting out though was to find a way to distract ourselves from the reality of our first Easter without Kay. Anyway, it was a great day. It was rainy all morning in Tacoma, but Port Orchard seemed to be in a rain shadow of sorts, and there the sun was out and though windy, it was very nice.
We started at a boat ramp on Long Lake, where hundreds of swallows, recent arrivals and a certain harbinger that warmer weather is on the way, soared over the lake, including a good number of Tree Swallows, mixed in the majority of Violet-green Swallows, and at least one distant Barn Swallow was a FOY for me. From there we walked to the area where the far-out-of-range Blue Jay has been seen. We get lots of Stellar's Jays, a fair number of California Scrub Jays, and at high elevations Gray Jays in WA, but the eastern usual jay, Blue Jay, is quite rare. We managed to locate it calling for several minutes, and I got a quick look as it flew across a clearing. Other highlights in this areas were Evening Grosbeaks. These are beautiful birds, and were quite vocal today helping in locating at least 3 birds, all males.

This Hairy Woodpecker helped fill out a 5-woodpecker species day, along with Pileated, Downy, Northern Flicker and Red-breasted Sapsucker.

This Red-breasted Sapsucker was first seen by my son, and gave us great looks in perfect lighting.

Yellow-Dumped Warblers seem to be just a few days behind the swallows in letting us know spring has sprung as they migrate through the area in small active flocks. We had hoped for other warbler species today, but it's still too early in the season.