Photos from birding in Seattle's Discovery Park yesterday with my friend Caitlin (all photos by her, not me):
I saw one new bird, the Black Scoter. There were two of them, and they were pretty far off. Basically I saw a black duck-shaped bird with a bit of an orange or light-colored beak and was able to narrow it down from there to this particular diving duck.
[img]https://cdn.download.ams.birds.cornell.edu/api/v1/asset/63901801/1800/img
That said, seeing the Black Scoter wasn't the best part of the trip. The best part of the trip was getting to share my knowledge about birds with Caitlin while she taught me about plants. The best part of the trip was running into a pair of birders who were camped out photographing two bald eagles building a nest in a tree, and another pair of birders who were looking through groups of robins trying to find a Varied Thrush (a bird I very much want to see, that most of you might know as the twin peaks bird. The bird in my avatar is a varied thrush (maybe you've heard me say that before)). The best part of the trip was looking out at the beautiful beach, the best part of the trip was seeing robins flocking and playing and "laughing" all around us, the best part of the trip was song sparrows insistently chirping all over like insistent little chihuahuas and hopping dark-eyed juncos and people in the park flying kites and remote controlled- airplanes. The best part of the trip was the trip.