My Trip to the Westcoast
Hello my dedicated and valued followers (perhaps I should call you something else... deciples perhaps?) I have recently returned to my homebase after a trip to Oregon that I have been planning for months now!! I went to visit my older sister who loves somewhere in those deep dark woods for an entire week! Ihough the main purpose of this visit was to see my sis - I also had two secondary goalz: one was to eat a crab and an oyster, and the socond was to see as many birds as possible. As some of my observant followers could deduce: I live in a landlocked state that honestly is kind of a poo poo area for birders such as myself. I think OR has more birds than OK cause there are sooooo many different types of habitats - not to mention the ocean birds that you just dont see here!
In total on this trip I recorded 59 new lifers (which almost doubles my life list on Merlin - but thats not totally accurate cause I lost my account for a long time... and didn't try to get it back... and don't record a lot of new lifers.) about half were waterbirds and half were landbirds (normal birds?). We explored the coast, wetlands, sand flats, whatever kinds of old/new growth forests they got there, and a river area. my favorite is haaaard to place. I really liked the ocean though we didn't see many birds (I saw a lot of tidepool creatures tho - see pic!) I saw my favorite bird of the trip there: the black oystercatcher!
If you were wodering, I ate exactly ONE oyster and felt like I was choking on it cause Cortney told me not to chew and just gulp it down... perhaps this is what a the oystercatcher feels like all the time. I also ate some clam chowder that was so good I had a foodgasm. OOH! I also had some sablefish in some kind of mushroomie stirfry - the sign on the dock says that they catch it via longline which reminded me of one of my favorite movies Captain's Courageous! I think in that movie they catch sablefish (black cod) and halibut. We also bought two crabs from a ship called uhhh i forgor. I hate to say it, but their deaths were at my hand (I was brave enough to grab them even with their pinching claws and throw them in the boiling pot) and I even learned how to clean them and scoop out their gutz n stuff! Sooooo delish! I liked the meat in the head more than the big claw.
I will probably post about the birding highlights of my trip but it would be a LOT to post every single one of the birds I saw. I'll link here a list of the posts I make, and maybe a list of all the specific birds I saw too... eventually. Also I will be making a seperate dedicated post on my feminist blog about the enchanted forest so keep an eye out for that as well! Hover your mouse over the pics to the side to see a little description!! CYA!
