Monthly COASST survey

I had high hope that this would be the week that we might be able to practice our identification skills on our monthly Boy Scout Beach walk. Friends Kristi and David, who live out near the beach and walk it quite often, had been out the previous weekend and sent us this picture. They thought it might have been an eagle because it was very large. Unfortunately there isn't enough to quality as an appropriate siting for COASST. It has to have a beak and a tarsus or a beak and a wing with primary feathers.

We look very close at the spot where they had found it the week before but of course it wasn't there.



On the "Bird-a-Day" calendar that Tina gave me the birds this weekend was the plover - its a perfect time to be spotting a plover as springtime approaches. But really, we don't really want to find any dead birds. I have to keep reminding myself of that.

We enjoyed watching this lone swan. I took this picture with the camera through the binoculars so they are a bit fuzzy. I think he was a young swam because of the slight discoloration of his neck. He doesn't quite have the mature all-white coloring.


And taking a nap standing up can be quite a challenge!


We also saw these cute little otter footprints. We haven't seen any otters here before. Its hard to tell on the beach though, there are usually so many dog foot prints that we could have missed them.