Swamped with Spring

School stuff wrapped up last week (with final grades due), but other work and various tasks on my TODO list are still leaving me feeling a bit swamped. It’s my intention to set some better routines around keeping up with day-to-day stuff, but sometimes that feels difficult when there are all the past-due things still hanging around waiting to be addressed. On the plus side, I took advantage of some less pleasant weather and made some significant progress on at least one of those lingering projects (reorganizing one of the rooms in my house).

It remains to be seen how much I remember about the past week or so by the time I get around to processing photos and posting weblogs (again – the lack of a daily routine here lets a lot of things fall through the cracks), so at the very least I’ll make some brief notes here. After a much warmer than usual winter and early spring, we were set back a bit by some cooler temperatures and a fall-like storm. Thursday through Saturday of last week saw over 3.5 inches of rain, with over 2″ falling on Friday. It was more of the steady all-day kind of rain, so the rivers rose significantly, but did not really flood. Temperatures were in the 40s (and earlier in the week, fresh snow was down on the Sisters).

Shorebird migration has continued to be slow. There was one morning with quite a few birds down at the park (Connor said), but there was not much down there by the time I made it. One evening I did see a Merlin go after a Rock Sandpiper, then a while later saw one (perhaps the same one?) actually catch a Black Turnstone. The turnstone was quite a burden, but the Merlin winged it back from the shoreline and disappeared into the forest (with an eagle giving a momentary pursuit).

As high pressure has moved in the last couple of days coinciding with a low tide series, we’ve had -3.5 tides the last couple of mornings. I haven’t been down at the beach at the lowest level, but did make a point of getting out to where I could see the flats as it was changing before I had to get on a call for work. I was interested to see a new main channel that wraps around the end of the trailer court fill towards the informal Eagle Way boat launch. I did walk the flats this morning before the low and saw 11 or more Semipalmated Plovers (a pretty good number for here) as well as a few Semipalmated Sandpipers and a few Whimbrel. The Whimbrel were up at mid-beach while I was out closer to the shore. I never noticed them fly off, but I did not see them again when I walked back up, and Connor didn’t find them later, so I’m not sure where they went. Also of interest to me was the various small flocks of shorebirds flying over the flats towards the Channel – I do not know where they were coming from, but I had not seen the out there on the beach as I was walking around.

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