After some frosty days, I was a little surprised to step outside this morning and find relatively warm temperatures and only dew on the windshield. I wonder if perhaps there had been enough cloud cover to keep temperatures from dropping quite so much, or maybe the winds shifting in advance of the weather change had brought enough warm air from the south to keep the temperatures up. It was partly cloudy for much of the day, though as the afternoon wore on, the patches of blue sky got smaller and smaller, especially over the water. By this evening when I was out playing ultimate, we even had a brief rain shower. Temperatures were over 60 during the day. It’s funny how warm that feels now even though we’re not that far removed from July and August when such temperatures were the norm. Winds picked up throughout the day, there were some pretty good gusts later this afternoon and this evening.
This morning I stopped along old airport road to see if any birds were hanging out. There were a few juncos and one rather skittish White-throated Sparrow. This afternoon on a trip to the Causeway, we saw a small raptor, my guess is a Merlin, though I only saw it briefly as it flew away. There were also several Horned Grebes, a flock of ~20 Surf Scoters, and some Harlequin Ducks along the shoreline of the Causeway in various places. Around the house we’re seeing quite a few juncos, at least one Steller’s Jay continues to visit, and there are at least two Anna’s Hummingbirds around as well.
The causeway was fun to visit. Until a couple of weeks ago it had been over 20 years since I had visited the Causeway (which was sort of hard to believe). Whereas last time we got out near the end, explored around and then walked back to near Whiting Harbor for pickup, this time we got on the Causeway near Whiting Harbor and walked toward the airport. It was interesting to see how many mushrooms were out. Granted I’ve not been looking around town that much lately, but it sure seemed like there was more abundance out there than what I’ve noticed in town.
Rowan was reluctant to go because it would mean missing story lab (which she really looks forward to every week), but I told her the Causeway was a pretty neat place and I wanted her to be able to see it, even if she missed a week of story lab to do so. In the end, she did enjoy getting out there and seeing the old bunkers we looked in. She wants to go back (on a day other than Wednesday, when story lab takes place) to explore the rest of the Causeway. Connor is excited to go on pretty much any outing, so it didn’t take any convincing for him to want to go.
I did take some pictures today, but it will be a while before I can really get them posted. I got a call from the repair center and they said the part needed to fix my computer is on back order and not expected in until next week.