One of the most reliable sights (with good optical assistance) from the shore at Discovery Park
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Discovery Park, with over 500 acres, is the largest park in the Seattle park system. Seward Park about which our own bwren has written many times is the second largest park in system. Discovery is located in the Magnolia neighborhood and is the westernmost extension of the city of Seattle into Puget Sound. The park is organized around a waste-water treatment plant. This may not sound very inviting but the plant is so well hidden that its existence is really only apparent from a couple angles in the park.
Bluffs along the southern shoreline of the park
The park is a complex mixture of environments. The property was originally Fort Lawton, an army base and the historic army buildings remain in an open area in the high central part of the park. Most of the surrounding environment is deciduous forest with some small meadows. The terrain varies from flat to steep ravines and hillsides. The shoreline is a mixture of high bluffs, sandy beach, and pebbly beach interspersed with large boulders.
Discovery Park is close enough to my house to be accessible by either car or bicycle but I usually drive as a) I can't carry my spotting scope on my bike and b) walking to shore from the parking lot and back is already pretty good exercise.
Sea Anemones at low tide
I have largely concentrated on the shoreline in my visits. Below are a few pictures from Friday (it was overcast and I was taking pictures through my scope so they are a bit dark). The pictures above are from visits in August and September.
As is true in many places, gulls are the most reliably seen shoreline birds. Typically the resident glaucous-winged are spread out along the entire shoreline. The smaller, winter visitor species are usually clumped in favored areas. In late September I saw large numbers of California gulls and small numbers of Mew and Ring-billed gulls. On Friday most of the gulls were Mews (most of the gulls in the above photo) with a few ring-bills and a few Heerman's gulls (bird with orange beak in photo). The glaucous-winged gulls seemed to avoid the other species.
I always see at least one Great Blue Heron along the shore and I imagine they will stay the winter.
One thing I have been looking forward to is an increase in the number and diversity of water birds as fall progresses. On Friday I was rewarded with several new species for the year.
Horned Grebe, a familiar bird in the winter back home in Florida
Above are terrible photos but I gather Western grebes are now fairly rare in these parts. A group of ten was traversing the sound some distance offshore and I was shooting fairly blind through the scope.
Other birds seen but not photographed include: bald eagle, mallards, and a rhinoceros auklet (very far away). I'm still waiting for some loons and still wondering about shorebirds (so far I've seen two juvenile black-bellied plovers and a small group of sanderlings).
In terms of other marine life I saw the sea lions on the buoy as usual and some 3-4 harbor seals (didn't hold still long enough for scope pictures) as well as the remains of some tube-dwelling marine invertebrates (I'm assuming some kind of polychaete worm).
The most exciting event of the morning happened just as I was about to leave. Four dark shapes popped into view offshore amidst the floating kelp. A quick look through the scope identified them as river otter heads! One of them was vigorously chewing on something and remained in place long enough for a few bad photos (one disadvantage of digiscoping is that your subject has to remain in place for a non-trivial amount of time).
That's it from me. What's going on in your neck of the woods?
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