We saw multitudes of birds, including great and common egrets, great herons, willets, marbled godwits, American avocets, lesser yellowlegs, common and pied-billed grebes, Canada and Aleutian cackling geese, tundra swans, great scaups, buffleheads, green-winged teals, ruddy ducks, northern shovelers, (common?) mergansers, a brown pelican, western and Bonaparte's gulls, common ravens, a peregrine falcon, a northern harrier, turkey vultures and song sparrows.
Out near the mouth of the slough, we disrupted a dozen or so harbor seal sunbathing. Some moved to another locale, and a number watched us from nearby in the water. The seals slid smoothly over the mud after picking up a bit of steam.
This weekend was the Aleutian Goose Fly-off at the Humboldt Bay Wildlife Preserve, which the slough meanders through. We had plans to get up at O-dark thirty on Sunday to see the geese take off, but some of us wimped out after a late movie night. Holly gets a gold star for going out anyway.
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On New Years Day, Thorne and I went canoeing from Woodley Island to Indian Island. The tide was rather low, but we were still able to paddle up a large inlet. Of note was a pied-billed greebe that swam past us underwater, after we disturbed his contemplations.
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We paddled up the Mad River on February 19. There wasn't as much wildlife as yesterday, but we did see a couple of large non-salmonid fish in a backwater pool. We had a few opportunities to paddle like hell in order to make headway against the river flow. On the way back down the river, we interrupted a batch of gun enthusiasts firing across the river. Thank goodness they stopped firing when they noticed us, rather than choosing us as a moving target.
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