Some Ornithological Show-n-Tell

DISCLAIMER: the views expressed are my own and not of Peace Corps.

Today I am posting a bit of a multi-media presentation. First, a few bird photos taken in the past week:
This is a handsome (and frisky) male Fire-crowned or Black-winged Bishop, defending his patch of corn on Saturday, October 23, 2010. I think they've gotten used to me and the camera. This one barely moved when we approached, and I was also able to take this video of the same bird!

This is a Fiscal Shrike. They seem to be really common here, but so far fairly camera shy. This one was even calling, but they take off the moment I take notice of them. Oh well, they seem to be getting used to me little by little. And they are still not as shy as...

...African Pied Hornbills. These guys are spectacular (though modest compared to many of the other hornbills in Africa!!) This one was calling loudly and sitting right next to the lycée, but the moment I stopped and took out my camera, he went mute. I was able to capture a short vocalization in my video here.

Other recent bird videos are on YouTube here:

Orange-cheeked Waxbill

Red-cheeked Cordonbleu

WARNING: these videos are not high-quality (to say the least), but they do capture the general experience of birding here in Cameroon. Even plain-looking birds can show surprising flashes of color and/or have beautiful songs. It's also useful to capture the songs for later reference, since birding by ear can be a far more useful skill than birding by eyes alone.

Other news:

• My living room set was delivered on Wednesday afternoon. On a rickety wagon. Pushed/dragged up a hill by one single (and rather slight) man. He asked for a tip, and I really wish I had asked in advance what is appropriate. I only had 400 CFA to give him - and he probably deserved a lot more!!
• I bought a projector to use at the high school. It will be much easier to show students how to do things rather than try to describe it in my still-suboptimal French. We'll see how that goes - it seemed to work on another guy's Terminale class on Friday, so we'll see. My biggest fear is the device getting damaged or stolen since I got the smallest model.
• I'm getting more and more confused about the concept of punctuality at the high school.

For more on the last bullet, here's an example: First, they publish a schedule that says that grades for the first sequence have to be filled out by last Tuesday. Yet on Tuesday afternoon, the report cards are still empty. They each need to be filled out by the professor principal. OK, so after checking on this every day for a week, on Wednesday, the names are finally filled in. However, I am also literally the only person filling in grades. One of the vice principals has also left early, so Thursday afternoon I make a special trip to fill out grades for my last two classes. I notice that I am at this point (2 full days past the "deadline") the 3rd teacher of 15-20 who has filled out any of the report cards.

Then on Friday, the vice principal for my (IT) department catches me, is clearly upset, and tells me that my department is behind and I am the last one to report statistics and I need to get him the department statistics (ie, summary of all grades) by Monday at the very latest. I mean, wtf?! If Friday was the "real" deadline for all work to be completed, they should have written Friday on the schedule in the first place. One of the other professors hadn't even given the final exam to one of his classes yet, so reporting is impossible until he collects, grades and fills out the report cards himself! All that said... being Peace Corps, it's not like you can fired for doing something "wrong", but still... still feeling general weirdness about how to interpret "the rules".

Speaking of weirdness in the extreme, I also heard something I don't ever want to hear again: someone (a Cameroonian) defending corporal punishment in school by saying that's what colonials did to motivate Africans on plantations in the U.S!! J.C... how do you even respond to something like that??

Here's the context: the guy in question was an English teacher who was answering a compliment posed by one of us volunteers, "How do you speak such good English?" His answer was that his own English teachers beat the students if they couldn't conjugate the verb "to be", etc. So he studied hard. Really, really hard, basically just to avoid being beaten.

OK... So I would agree that discipline is a problem here. Probably the biggest problem other than lack of resources. Actually, discipline is arguably worse, since the kids will not share the resources (ie computers) they have, and they often don't behave or study well enough to deserve using them. Hence why I bought a projector: they don't learn anything in the classroom, so they can't do anything in the lab. At least with the projector I can walk them through the assignment step-by-step.

Yet many of the kids (if not most) don't study, don't care, cheat remorselessly, hit, yell, chat with others with their backs completely facing me as I'm trying to teach them... it's as if they accept failure very easily and have no interest in classwork at all. But good God... I think it has been proven by now that beating people into submission is Very Bad Thing, and that positive reinforcement actually works better in the long run. It would not be a good thing to have my 300 students scarred for life by memories of being beaten by a white chick, screaming "Click with the LEFT mouse button!! HOLD DOWN the shift key! TURN OFF CAPS LOCK!!"

I really don't think those kids would end up liking computers very much... :)

Bandjoun Birding

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are my own and not of Peace Corps.

A couple of weekends ago I found a wetlands area a short walk from my house here in Bandjoun. That was some great luck! It's probably only here in the rainy season, but right now there is a colony of Viellot's Black and Village Weavers there. I also managed to find some other interesting species such as Zebra Waxbills (bright red and orange-striped finches) and a Wire-tailed Swallow! I did hear what was probably a rail of some sort, but strangely I no luck finding any waterfowl or wading birds. I'm not complaining though - the birds that were there were gorgeous, and there were fish jumping in the stream.

Wire-tailed Swallow

Viellot's Black Weaver

The rest of the town also had some interesting avian visitors. In addition to African Pied Hornbills and Green (Guinea) Turacos that occasionally show up, and the resident Fiscal Shrikes, Red-cheeked Cordon-Bleus, Splendid Glossy Starlings, Fire-crowned Bishops and other wonders, I have seen an Ovambo Sparrowhawk a few times. I managed to capture this one at the top of a tree practically in the middle of town!
Just beyond the stream and up a steep hill, I managed to find this Ashy Flycatcher also. Plus some sunbirds, canaries and mystery warbler I'm tentatively calling a Red-Pate Cisticola. (Oddly, the red-pate shows up in the video I took but not in the photo, where it looks more like a deformed Willow Warbler. Neither of the pictures my field guides bare any resemblance to the other, and I basically compared photos I found online!) In any case, this flycatcher was MUCH easier to identify.

Teaching is going really well this week. Since the first sequence just ended, I had to grade all 6 classes last week. I'm very glad I don't have more classes than that, and only around 60 students per class: it took 2 days to grade all the exams, and then 4 hours today to record the grades! Some of the tests were from students who weren't on the roster (yikes - I only now realized they were hogging the computer lab from paying students!), and other students didn't turn in assignments at all. It's also hard to reconcile the names on the papers with the roster because they all have 4-5 names which they use in random combinations. One student signed her name "Sylvie" when the prenom is least important element of the name! I had to do some detective work and elimination to figure out who it was.

I also discovered (finally seeing the student rosters for the first time today) that the student numbers the students have all been writing on their assignments are mostly wrong. I was hoping that numbers would be infallible if I couldn't read the name. So much for that plan!

Four of the 6 classes did fairly well, averaging about 12/20 (which is at least a passing grade). Sixiemes did not, averaging 9/20, the majority failing in each class. That was even after fudging the grades by turning all work other than the final exam into extra credit. The average before that was 7/20. I'm really going to have to slow down for them.

Today the subject for the Seconde class was the different types of computers. I figured there wasn't much point in following the textbook and teaching them about hybrid, analog, neXT computers and mainframes (and the whole history of the IBM product line), so I gave them the latest on PCs, laptops, tablets, smartphones and "smart" vs. "dumb" clients. The students were so excited to see and touch my Blackberry also, and then they were asking me price ranges in dollars, euros and CFA on all the different types of computers I described. Phew. It is so much more interesting to talk about tangible objects rather than the term definitions and historical objects (Pascaline!? Abacus beads??) we've been dwelling on for the past 6 weeks.

I am noticing also that it is raining pretty much every single day. It doesn't last long, but it is very very hard when it does rain. One issue is that if it suddenly starts during class, no one can hear anything unless you close the windows, and then the room is pitch-black. Plus, no one wants to leave school and walk in a downpour. Even after it stops, the roads are slick and muddy, and you end up at least with shoes just covered with red mud.

Laundry is another inconvenience: I washed my clothes on Friday, and I was only able to take my socks in today, 3 days later (since I don't have a dryer or anything!) Even though my neighbors were sweet enough to move the socks under the roof overhang before the first rain, it still took 3 days for them to dry. The irony of course is that when the sun shines, it's so hot that most of my clothes are dry within 4 hours. So if I'm lucky, I can have laundry done end-to-end on the same day. But the rain just rolls in at random. Last night, I saw lightning flashes around 11:30pm that went on for a while. Then thunder suddenly struck, I heard the wind come out of nowhere, and then just sheets of rain DUMPED on the roof. I don't think I've ever heard rain that hard in my life (and I am from Seattle and lived in the Midwest, btw).

Another thing I found strange was that after a whole day without power when it hadn't even been raining, we had this sudden powerful storm and the power stayed on throughout. Go figure.

A few bird videos

Today, I'm posting some bird videos that I have taken in the past couple of days. I thought it would be fun to take video as it captures the behavior and the vocalizations, even if the visuals are not always super high quality.

This is a Red-collared Widowbird (Euplectes ardens), well camouflaged in this eucalyptus tree. The red collar actually does not show in this Cameroonian subspecies, but the long tail is very evident from this angle! You can also hear its distinctive rattling call over some loud Pied Crow cawing.

Here are a few links to others videos of some of the more common birds in the area.

A gorgeous Fire-crowned Bishop (Euplectes hordeaceus) vocalizing near my house in Bandjoun in October 2010. I kept taking video and playing it back, and hearing his own voice annoyed him enough to come this close!

A frisky male Yellow-shouldered Widowbird (Euplectes macrourus) doing a territorial display near Kamgo in October 2010. He may have been responding to my pishing, as there were a lot of birds in the bushes. A Singing Cisticola (Cisticola cantans) is calling in the background.

A Black-crowned Waxbill (Estrilda nonnula) near Bandjoun in October 2010. These are very common around my house, and even though they are tiny, their bright red rumps are easy to spot as they fly away. A few Yellow-fronted Canaries (Serinus mozambicus) and abundant Gray-headed Sparrows (Passer griseus) are calling in the background - the latter call very similar to that of House Sparrows! The very light "tick" is the call that belongs to the waxbill.

The pair of Red-faced Lovebirds (Agropornis pullaria) that I posted about earlier during PST in Bafia in August. A Tawny-flanked Prinia (Prinia subflava) is vocalizing in the foreground.

Here's another (better) view of a male Red-collared Widowbird, also in Bandjoun.

Birding and adjusting... 8 October 2010

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are my own and not of Peace Corps. For real.

Bandjoun continues, for better or for worse.

On the upside, at least I finally got a coveted profile shot of a Red-cheeked Cordon-Bleu! This is a female, so of course it lacks the red cheek. They are very common, but are incredibly fast, especially when someone whips out a camera that makes scary noises when it turns on.

Today Cristina and I hit the road to Kamgo for a quick birding trip. The weather cooperated today, overcast for most of it, then very hot while we returned and then *pouring* rain right as Cristina got into the car to go home. Very lucky... except that I had to wait under an awning with many others for the rain to stop.

Since I wrote last I've had more fascinating experiences. First, I was surprised on Monday to learn that there was a seminar I was obligated to attend the following day. The subject: training ICT teachers to teach algorithms and network topology. Well, interestingly those were the two subjects I practiced teaching in model school. But no biggie. It took place at the incredibly large and well-equipped Lycee Classique de Bafoussam. Pictured are their big sports field and fancy-pants computer lab! The latter has actual grounded outlets, non-wobbly benches and Pentium IV computers. No internet or even a LAN though, but it was very impressive. I dug the curtains too... someone spent some time designing that space!












Anyway, I left around noon because I was not feeling so hot and I also felt that I didn't really need the training anyway. The insight offered to teach algorithms was to use an analogy of a quadratic equation. Except that that glossed over the biggest hurdle I personally had... which was that variables are not the same concept in computer science as they are in math. The one issue I had, and they glossed over it and just used a math problem. So I was a bit annoyed that I was missing teaching two classes to go to this thing... which wasn't terribly useful.

Then I was caught in the rain on the way home. It was actually a bit scary: I could see the dark clouds roll in, spewing thunderbolts as they came right toward me. Unfortunately, I was in a part of town where it is nearly impossible to get a car to Bandjoun. I waved down a few, but they just drove off when I said the name of the town. Yikes.

So I tried walking toward the taxi stand, but it was too late. My umbrella blew apart (causing many chuckles from passers-by) and then I ducked into a hardware store to wait out the rain. It did not stop for 1-1/2 hours! I finally darted across the street so I could at least sit in a restaurant/bar. It said it was that. But it was a bar, actually. No food. Darn it! But it was fine - there was a very nice guy there and we chatted. He flagged down a car to get to Marche A and there made sure I found a car to Bandjoun. That was very nice.

What wasn't so nice is that the next morning I woke up with a horrible cold. I was coughing so much, I almost passed out. Even the neighbor remarked on it since she could hear it through the wall all night. So I skipped school Wednesday also. I sent a text message to two members of the administration, and since I didn't hear back I assumed it was OK. I guess that's how it works here!

So then it gets stranger: I got a phone call from a colleague on Saturday morning. He said he heard I was sick. I said yes, but I'm better now. Then he asked if I would be in school on Tuesday. I said yes, why wouldn't I be? I'm in school Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. He said, no - he just heard I was sick, so wondered if I would be there Tuesday. I said Yes. He hung up. No goodbye or anything. Weird.

So then Tuesday, I walk to school. I pass students and teachers. A large group of students is hanging out at the carrefour. I even pass one of the censeurs (vice-principals) who says Hello to me. But when to get to the school, all the doors are padlocked. There is no one there except a smattering of students. I look around, then ask one of them, "What holiday is this?" The reply: "La fete de l'Enseignant" (Teacher's Holiday).

So... no one told me this, everyone assumed I knew. Even the teachers and the vice-principal who passed me, a white foreign teacher *carrying a bookbag* toward the school on a national (not international) holiday assumed I knew this. Wow. I will never complain about poor on-boarding practices in corporate America again.

So I'm still not sure if my colleague was trying to tell me about this fete and I just didn't understand him, or if what I thought I heard was accurate (in which case I assume he ran out of phone credit rather than just hanging up when I said I would be at school on Tuesday). That was just one of several "wtf" moments caused by information someone in the school assumed I already knew:

• That I had to attend a parade on the Fete de l'Enseignant. Apparently I even had a role to play. That would have been nice to know in advance, not the day after when I found out. I didn't even know there was a parade until my neighbor told me (while I was doing laundry)
• What the heck an "Animateur Pedagogique" does (my role in the ICT department) and what the agenda is for a meeting with the department that he/she is supposed to lead
• How clubs are announced and how they are supposed to function. In model school, they were all posted at the same time, no officers were elected, and we winged it with no ill effects. Here, they seem to have elections the first day and notices that announce them (believe it or not) have to be notarized by the censeur!! Stranger, no other clubs have been announced, but the members of my computer club were downright incensed that the notice was posted in only *one* place instead of being announced in person in every class in the school. (Sigh.) I would know this... how??
• That tests are at the end of sequence, every 6 weeks. I guess that's why the students of one class were so annoyed about being given a quiz (which I only gave when absolutely none of them did their homework).
• What the heck people are saying when they speak slang at break-neck speed. And then they get offended or groan when I don't understand them. Give me a break.

Well, anyway... it's all the continuation of this major adjustment. I guess they only get a new volunteer every two years, and everything is nationalized so Cameroonian teachers all know these rules already. Yet after speaking with other volunteers, it seems like every experience is very different. Only the ICT teachers posted in Lycee Classiques in Francophone regions have to teach in French: a small percentage of us. I haven't found anyone else expected to head a 4-person department and maintain a computer lab to boot.

The expectations of teachers are so high: we seem to be expected to carry themselves a certain way, speak and understand French perfectly, know the subject and how to make students relate to it (which I'm finding incredibly hard, given that I can't relate to THEM). I have to wonder if they are too high, especially for someone with (as seems typical for Peace Corps volunteers) no teaching background.

It will work out, I'm sure. Meanwhile, I should finally get my living room set on the 20th. I can't wait: I feel like I'm living in a cave, with only a bed and a table!

OK, back to birding. Here are a couple more photos from this morning's birding adventures. The first is of a Singing Cisticola. He did sing beautifully! The second is an African Blue Flycatcher, a gorgeous little guy that I've even had in my yard once.

Til next time...

A few more bird photos

I found one advantage to the grainy bird photos I'm taking: they are VERY fast to upload over this slow internet connection. But that's about it. I am seriously thinking of how I can have my nice camera sent over here from the States!

One thing that deserves mention is that at my house here in Bandjoun, I have a couple of resident Blue-shouldered Robin Chats. I think they're just gorgeous (black/rufous with a bit of sky blue on the shoulders), and not too shy either. One was just singing at dusk this evening from a wire, and then swooped in to land right in a yellow-flowering bush in front of me! In Bafia, I only saw them during early morning hours, and they did not sing at all. Here is one I photographed early morning near the building where we had Peace Corps training in Bafia. I have not been quick enough here in Bandjoun to get the photo, but I'm working on it!

Another species I did not see in Bafia but have a lot of here in Bandjoun is the Baglafecht Weaver. They are also a bit skittish, and the only photo I have taken is this rather blurry one. It doesn't look much like the field guide other than the black mask and yellow eye, but between my two books and process of elimination, I am fairly confident in this ID.

It has been overcast, so between that and my digital zoom, it has been challenging to get decent photos of birds!




(Many) thanks to Cristina, here are some of the African Gray Parrots that were hanging out by the lycee in Bafia. That morning, there were three in this Acacia tree on my street, and three in the treetops of another Acacia across the street, and this photos is about the best one that came out. At least, they look like parrots more than just blurry spots! You can *almost* make out the red tail on the one on the left.

On more work-related topics... today I managed to get one more computer in working order... ironically by removing the A/V software that was using 100% of the 32 MBs of memory! I shudder at just about every component of that sentence. I also got the server connecting to the internet, another outlet installed and a couple of UPSes working. Better than that, I managed to find a good/affordable electrician I will definitely use again.

I still have one more box to fix tomorrow, and a few more to scavenge after that. I need to try to piece together at least 4 more functioning computers out of 6 already-parted-out boxes: the 6 that are PIIIs (the best available in the pile of non-functioning stuff). I've been given the goal to have 30 functioning computers by the beginning of school on Monday, and I am only 50% there right now. There is a pending shipment of 10 new (donated) PCs that should come next week. So fingers crossed on that! I'm not sure what kind of miracle I can pull out from a pile of dusty computers with Windows 98 stickers on them.

On another note, I did finally break down and buy a gas canister for 30.000 CFA... Tonight, I enjoyed steamed rice with green beans/carrots/onions and sweet and sour sauce (made from mango juice). I made spaghetti with fresh tomato/onion sauce a few nights ago, and scrambled eggs and hash browns this morning. So I think it was worth it!

More on birding in Batie

As mentioned in my previous post, I went birding Sunday morning for a few hours with Cristina, another Peace Corps volunteer in the nearby town of Batie. This was an amazing experience. We did not know where to begin, so we just took a dirt road leading behind Cristina's house. Yet it yielded 10 lifebirds in around 3 hours, and some wonderful looks at scenery and some exotic birdlife. We may have even heard monkeys in the distance at one point!

The beginning was very much like Bandjoun (or what little I've seen of the Western Province so far): Red-cheeked Cordon-Bleus, Common/Orange-cheeked/Black-crowned Waxbills, Village/Spectacled/Dark-backed/Baglafecht Weavers, Narrow-tailed Starlings and the ubiquitous Pied Crow. Cristina's neighbor Billy started to follow and point out these birds, and suddenly said there was a "red bird". This turned out to be a brilliant male Fire-crowned Bishop who scared up some Red-headed Queleas. We had seen those before. Yet following the bishop to the other side of the road, I noticed a pair of striking black and red birds in a treetop, sporting very reptilian-looking bills: Double-toothed Barbets! That was my first lifebird of the day.

The second came moments later when I spotted a few tiny black and white birds, which turned out to be White-bellied Tits.

Billy started trying to call us some perdri, or partridges. We did see a Double-spurred Francolin shortly after that, but I was more interested in a bright green and red bird that darted from tree to tree: I decided it had to be a trogon, but which one? I started to hear the call, and unsuccessfully called back to try to draw it out. But later upon listening to recordings, decided it must have been a Bar-tailed Trogon.

While doing that, we managed to scare up a Gray-green Bush Shrike, a striking bird in the native growth that peppered the cultivation in this area. By now, we were close to the bottom of a small valley in which there was a belt of riverine habitat. So the birds were getting better. This is where I first noticed a Green Turaco, quietly observing us from a treetop! Very exciting, especially when it flew from branch to branch, exposing the brilliant red wings.

The trail became more and more narrow and slippery, but we decided to push on when we found a Black-headed Tchagra, a handsome shrike that responded to my pishing near the stream! A few sunbirds, including the iridescent blue/green/red/purple Splendid Sunbird, even stayed long enough for us to admire them!

We were apprehensive about descending to the river, partially because of the treacherous trail but also out of fear of snakes... but we pushed on, tempted by all the bird songs we were hearing! After crossing, we managed to find a Senegal Coucal (very common), White-chinned Prinias (seen before), more sunbirds and some Black-and-white (or Bicolored) Mannakins... but we were finally rewarded when a brilliant blue bird landed at the top of a tree in the photo above: it was a Splendid Glossy Starling! Later, a few more joined. I was thrilled since as previously noted, I had come up short on colorful starlings to that point!

A bit later, I noticed a Gray-crowned Black Finch in the undergrowth by a small farm. It disappeared quickly, but was very striking by the gray crown and black underparts - most likely a female since it had very few spots on the underparts.

By this point we were hungry, so we turned around. But after crossing the stream again, we found two more Green Turacos, one which flew flashing its brilliant red wings, and a second that posed for us on a branch for a few moments just at eye level. At this point, we heard what we thought might have been monkeys in the distance.

As always, a few birds went unidentified. There was some sort of cuckoo-like call. A different low hooting (which started slow and accelerated a bit like a western screech owl) may have been something interesting, but the bird itself eluded us. There were a few nondescript brownish birds as well which may have been early migrants or juveniles of some sort. Two of the more distinctive ones I identified as a Leaflove and a Little Greenbul.

Many birds were gathering nesting material, and the whydahs (Pin-tailed, Red-collared, Yellow-shouldered) were showing enthusiastic mating behavior. The Pin-tailed Whydah in particular put on a great show, flying around and landing on banana leaves while pursuing a couple of females. Another great day of birding here in Cameroon!!

Bandjoun photos (and a couple from Bafia)

DISCLAIMER 1: the views expressed are my own and not of Peace Corps
DISCLAIMER 2: apologies for the poor photo quality - my good camera is back in the states!

I thought I would post a couple of photos from Bafia of a couple of very common birds, especially since I haven't seen them here in Bandjoun yet. The Mosque Swallow (at left) looks and behaves like a large pale Barn Swallow, though in flight they are bulky and have red rumps. In Bafia, they were often hanging around treetops and utility wires. Other aerial birds I saw in the residential quarter included the blue-and-white Ethiopian Swallows, long-tailed Palm Swifts, white-rumped Little Swifts and all-black Square-tailed Sawwings. Here in Bandjoun, I have seen Little Swifts and Ethiopian Swallows so far, and a possible Banded Martin back in early July.



The Speckled Mousebird deserves mention also: they are common in Bafia, but reaaally cute. They often hung upside-down from branches, and seemed to curl up together. The kids in my environmental club called it the sauve-souris. Usually they are in medium-sized trees and banana plants, though this particular one was sitting on the stone wall next to my host house family's house, which was lined with broken glass... ouch!



I also saw this species in South Africa, so it seems very common and wide-spread on the continent.


Fiscal Shrikes seem to be fairly common here in Bandjoun. This species was the first that I saw when I arrived for site visit: there were two on the wires right in my yard when we pulled up! Later, I saw a pair feeding a baby opposite the Hotel de Ville, and I just found this one this morning in a tree next to the house. I also heard its call for the first time, and it was a bit harsher than I expected.

This is not a great angle, but essentially they are elegant, average-sized black and white shrikes.

Moving on, I am still amazed by how many birds here in Cameroon are incredibly colorful and/or have spectacular tails. Many of the male whydahs have these long trains while the females are usually drab and brown! The photo below is of a male Red-collared Widowbird (or whydah) which I saw for the first time in my yard just yesterday!


There seems to be a pair hanging around, since I noticed the female on the road this morning. This male was kind enough to pose for a bit here around 9am on the 21st of August.

That's all for now. Hasta luego (pardon... a tout a l'heure)!

Marrowstone Island Saturday

Long story short: I spent a warm, sunny Saturday (probably 75-80° F) looking for birds around the eastern Olympics. The reason: last week, I decided to write the fall destination article for Seattle Audubon's Earthcare on that area. I had had a lot of luck in the past with the Protection Island cruise and nearby Fort Worden during that time of year, so Port Townsend and vicinity seemed like a good idea.

While writing the directions, though, I notice this big island immediately to the right of Port Townsend. Marrowstone Island. It looks like great habitat, has a big state park (Fort Flagler) on the north end of it, and I'm suddenly intrigued enough to want to check it out.

Anyway... the directions from maps.bing.com for Fort Flagler were pretty good. Except for how it ends: "if you reach Flagler Campground Rd, you've gone too far". OK, obviously if you go too far, you end up in Puget Sound.

I must say though, mid-July was probably not the greatest time to go. I think winter or migration (read: any other time) would be better! Yet you definitely have a couple of interesting features. First, there's a pretty dramatic current off the beach on the east side of the park. It wasn't exactly stuffed with birds, but it was very close to shore (a scope help but isn't necessary), and there were a heck of a lot of Pigeon Guillemots diving and sloshing and playing around in that current. They float from one end to the other, and then fly back to the north end. There were a lot of gulls bobbing there as well (though sadly I didn't bother IDing them), though I was a bit surprised not to see any other species.

But anyway, the second thing is, the island just looks adorable. The tiny inlets and harbors full of boats are so picturesque. Plus, there seems to be great access to the coastline from all over the island and every direction, so I can see it will be really good to know about this place during shorebird migration!

My list for Fort Flagler today: ubiquitous Swainson's Thrush heard singing. Several Brown-headed Cowbirds being fed by their Song Sparrow foster-parent. American Goldfinches potato-chipping among the big leaf maples overhead. A lot of American Robins, Barn and Violet-green Swallows.

Yet this is the way it always goes for me: at the Edmond's Ferry Terminal at 8:40am, on my way to where I was going (and practically still in Seattle), I had pretty much every interesting bird of the day in one raft: Pigeon Guillemots displaying at each other, Rhinocerous Auklets hanging around a single Cassin's Auklet. A pair of Marbled Murrelets a bit farther out. Several fly-overs by Heerman's Gulls, and at least one Bald Eagle fly-over as well. Go figure!