I'd never seen a Rhinocerous Auklet before, so I decided to go to Point Roberts. I decided this around 10 a.m. and I had office hours to get to at 1:30 p.m. I had to hurry.

So I grab my passport, U.S. money, and trusty camera, and I jump in my car and head down towards the border. Point Roberts is a small piece of the States that is joined by land to Canada but not directly to the rest of the continental U.S. It's only a few square miles in area, and it has its own border crossing, down near the Tsawassen ferry terminal.

So zoom I go, and I make it through customs (after explaining what a Rhinocerous Auklet was) and get down to Lighthouse Park in Point Roberts at about 11:30. I gave myself about an hour in the park.

It was a hot day with lots of sun so I greased myself with suntan lotion before going out. I walked the length of the park, looking for the auklets, searching the waves with my binoculars. There were no auklets to be found. :-( I was bummed.

I did notice some bird that I didn't recognize, though, and was lucky that I had the foresight to bring a field guide along with me to the beach. Typically I leave my field guide in the car when I'm out birding. I looked around the field guide (a Sibley's) and eventually found the bird I was seeing. It was a Harlequin Duck. I first saw a couple of males, out on the waves; they would occasionally dive down, obviously after food of some sort.

Harlequins have very interesting and distinctive markings. Here's one approaching some kelp.

Closer to shore, there were a couple of other ducks I didn't recognize. It took me longer than I would have expected to figure out that these were female Harlequins. Here's one of the ladies.

Well, after watching the Harlequins hunting for a while, I turned to scan some gulls down the beach with my binoculars. I thought that maybe I was getting a little bothered by the sun, because the rocky beach in front of me seemed to be swimming or shimmering a little. I looked at it again, it it seemed hard to focus on. With just a little more concentration, I found that it wasn't a problem with my head, that there were actually little things moving along the beach. It was a group of about a dozen peeps (small sandpipers). I'd never seen peeps on a rocky beach before, and their camouflage was very impressive.

It was a mixed group, with both Least Sandpipers and Western Sandpipers. Here's a Least from the group:

...and here's a Western:

I took a few pictures of the gulls, too, but no real good close-ups. They were pretty skittish. I have a hard time identifying gulls; there are several very similar-looking species.

Anyhow, time was short so I went back to my car and went through Canadian customs and zoomed on to work. I arrived about 10 minutes late, but it didn't seem that anyone was waiting for me at my office.

Well, I was still bummed about missing the auklets. Maybe it had been only a one-day event, and I was too late.

When I got home that evening, my cat Zippy was hanging out in the courtyard. Since my mom had recently asked me why I hadn't sent any pictures of him, I decided to pull out the camera and start shooting. Zippy responded with the usual feline disinterest; he thought the whole exercise was a yawner.

I've seen this kitty around the courtyard recently, but I don't know his name. Zippy made a lazy claw swipe at him when he walked by, but neither cat seemed really interested in being mean to the other.

I spent the rest of the evening sorting through my photo files, which have been expanding rapidly and need a thorough pruning.

That's all for now...

Tom the wayward shutterbug