Wings Of

I went to do my regular survey for COASST on Saturday. The weekend before, during the big swell, there had been improbable amounts of foam in some places but on 11/14 almost all of it had been washed away or, if blown above the tides, reduced away to a grainy pale brownish residue. On Rialto Jetty there was some notably new drift (those bright red-alder trunks really stand out), the gulls were very active both over the river and over the ocean, the foam coming in was mostly the clean white stuff that sinks right in with a fizzy noise like bubble water shaken up and opened too fast--

Fresh drift, Rialto Jetty, 11.14.2009... (Click for larger image.)

and I had one beached bird. The wings of. (Well, yeah, with a bit of breastbone and some connecting stuff, but basically if it's not a measurable and identifiable part, it doesn't count.) With only wings, all there was to measure and write down was the wing chord, and all I had to go on for identification in the field guide was the wing table. That part— unshipping the pack, laying out the tools, measuring, writing down— doesn't take very long. Flipping through the book, looking up each bird whose wings were the right size, changing my mind, measuring the one measure over and over (absolutely definitely 31 centimeters every time), thinking some more, sitting on a log and mumbling to myself ("No! This mantle is definitely not dark!") is what takes all the time :-) I decided it was a northern fulmar.

Northern fulmar, wings of. (Click for larger image.)

For COASST, the formal ID photos: 769b, 769c, 769d, 769e.

When I got home, illustrations in Sibley of the light form of northern fulmar, and photos on the web, gave me a little confidence. OK, then. Northern fulmar. A bird that lives on the open ocean. OK.

On the Ellen Creek beach segment, the shore was mostly swept clean; plainly the waves in some places washed right over the berm, sometimes all the smaller wood and even the pebbles pushed up past the really big logs, and nothing at all on the sand. Some small accumulations left here and there. In one place there was (part of) a skate carcass. No dead or distressed birds. At Ellen Creek itself there was some smaller wood, but most of it had been carried away.

Ellen Creek, Rialto Beach, 11/14/2009 (Click for larger image.)

On the way home I took the side road that loops up onto Quillayute Prairie, and there were elk in the field to the east of the Quillayute airport. I was driving along thinking about the eagles I saw apparently squabbling over Lake Crescent the previous weekend, and the seal I saw off Ediz Hook, and how we respond to wildlife, and about the phrases 'charismatic megafauna' and 'marquee animals'; and there by golly right out the window were the Olympics' marquee animals, munching peaceably in a field, miles and miles from the contiguous protected lands of the Park...

Elk near the Quillayute airport (Click for larger image.)