On Wednesday the 19th of July, I had just finished overeating (I was testing the food at a new restaurant up the street...sadly, it was lacking, but I had to try lots of different stuff) when I got a phone call saying that there was a Little Stint at the Iona sewage treatment ponds.

Now, as you probably know, in the past I've gone birding at Iona for a short while, or, as one might say, I've done a little stint at Iona. But I'd never seen a Little Stint at Iona. Or anywhere else, for that matter. Little Stints, it turns out, are small shorebirds (peeps) that are pretty uncommon around here. The phone call was an exciting development. I immediately went home for my camera and headed out to the ponds.

When I got there, there were probably a dozen or so birders gathered looking at a rather large collection of small shorebirds. Unfortunately, there was just the one stint in the bunch, he didn't stand out that much, and the birds didn't stay still too long. So I spend the waning hours of the day looking through hundreds of very mobile small birds for one special one. I didn't find it, and none of the birders I was with saw it after I arrived (many had seen it before I got there).

Well, I did take a few photos of the fauna anyhow. Here's one of our usual small shorebirds, a Least Sandpiper. Little Stints are pretty much the same size and shape as this fellow, but with black legs and slightly different markings on the body.

To me, that photo points out how good the camouflage of these little pipers really is...the bird gets a bit lost in the background.

Most of the birds out on the pond that day were Western Sandpipers, which are also of a similar size and shape to Leasts.

That was pretty much it from Wednesday. I had spent most of my time looking through binoculars for the stint, and the sun was down before I knew it.

The stint was spotted for a day or two after that, but I was busy with work and not able to make it out there. The next time I did make it out was on Saturday the 22nd. Saturday started the way Wednesday had ended—with a Lesser Yellowlegs.

I hung around the inner ponds for about an hour, meeting and chatting with a couple from Seattle who had come up to try to see the bird. The whole time we were there we saw only two or three small shorebirds; it was quite a contrast from Wednesday.

So I gave up on the Little Stint and headed on out to the outer ponds, in the public part of the park. Soon after I got there, an Osprey flew over, looking for lunch.

But other than that, the birds were making themselves scarce. So despite not having my macro lens with me, I decided to try to take some insect photos. One of the things that's interesting at Iona is that near the marshy north outer pond, there's generally lots of Western Sand Wasps (Bembix americana). Sand Wasps have a very neat color pattern: green eyes, yellow legs, and alternating light green and black bands on the abdomen. Sometimes the light green looks light blue.

Anyhow, here's one of the little beauties now.

That was neat to see, but I sure hoped that she had checked with the utilities commission before she started that digging...there could be a power line or something under there, and it's better safe than sorry.

I also caught a few shots with two wasps interacting. I don't know what the interactions were all about, but in the one shown below, the upper wasp just came by and touched the lower wasp a bit with their legs, then flew off. The lower one then went on digging, like nothing had happened.

The ways of wasps can be mighty mysterious.

Anyhow, I really dug what the wasps were doing and one day I'll probably go back with my macro lens and see if I can get any good close-ups of them.

Soon the midday sun was starting to get to me, and so I headed back for my car. On the way, I spotted this moth in some debris on the ground. I don't know the species, and I've never had good luck trying to identify brown moths.

Right near the parking lot, I found a place where there were a bunch of dragonflies patrolling back and forth, going one way against the wind and the other way with it. I got on their sunward side and tried to get shots of them flying. It was really tough going, as autofocus wasn't fast enough and I had to follow the dragons while trying to manuallyfocus...and dragonflies tend to move fast and make sudden changes of direction.

It was frustrating, but I thought it was good practice for me. Eventually I did get a couple of shots of them in decent focus.

After fifteen minutes or so with the darners, I retreated to the air-conditioned interior of my car and spent the rest of my day on domestic errands.

Well, I've been darned.
Tom