Low Tide and Sunshine

I tried to make myself clean house today, but a minus 3.6 tide and sunshine lured me to the beach instead. Today's was possibly the lowest tide of the summer, exposing beach probably a half mile from shore near my house.Putting on my beachwatcher's hat, I saw:

Moon snails: I don't see how all that body could ever get inside that shell, but it does! These things eat clams, by drilling a hole through the shell and sucking out the meat.

Geoducks: Somebody else dug this one up; that looks like way too much work to me.

Christmas anemone: The colors don't show up too well here, but it's a festive red and green.

Also many aggregating anemones and possibly plumrose (or is it plumose, I'm not sure) anemones, and one pretty little unidentified light green anemone. AND a bright red sea cucumber, a couple of sea lemons, a mossy chiton, a whole bunch of assorted starfish, hundreds of rough piddocks, limpets, dogwinkles. A few herons, a bald eagle, many crabs (red rock, hemigrapsus, hermit), acres of eelgrass and bull kelp, and about 27 billion barnacles and mussels.

Oh, and walking back up the hill from the beach, 3 deer.

Now I'm sitting on my deck watcing the birds at my feeder. I have many black-headed grosbeaks this year, and of course goldfinches, chickadees, purple finches, down and hairy woodpeckers, flickers, pine siskins.

For the past two years, starlings have nested in my eaves just outside my living room window. I know that most birders hate them; supposedly they drive other birds away (haven't noticed that happening here yet), and I do admit that they can be noisy at times. But ever since I started really listening to their vocalizations, I'm quite fascinated. They have a huge "vocabulary" of sounds, are great mimics and I've even heard them do a spot-on bald eagle impression. I know that starlings will congregate in large flocks at times, and I certainly hope that doesn't happen next to my house, but the flocks that congregate down by the ferry dock put on just spectacular flying displays many evenings: huge amorphous clouds of birds taking on fantastical shapes in the sky.

Enough rambling for today, I really must start on that house cleaning!