The Beaver has landed

 

We’re home at Sandpipers.

 

2015 summer trip map

 

Five months.  Nine and a half thousand miles.  Eleven states.  A family reunion.  Kids and Grandkids.  Friends.  State Parks.  Federal and National parks.  A niece we’d never met.  A cousin we hadn’t seen in twenty years.  We stayed at sixty-one different places.  We stopped at five different dog washes and two groomers.  We got rain, at least some, every day for our first month on the road.  All through Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado.  Rain.  Then none.  No rain for the next four months while we went from Colorado to the California coast, up the Oregon coast, to the Washington coast, back and forth inland Oregon and Washington, then back down through California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas.  No rain.  The whole Pacific Northwest was dry.  (It has since gotten wet again.)

 

The birding was good.  When we left Texas, we had 289 birds on our quest to identify 400 species each year.  (Last year we got 401.)  On our trip north, we gathered in eastern kingbird, black-capped chickadee, harris’s sparrow and lark bunting.  In Colorado we picked up broad-tailed hummingbird, spotted towhee, mountain bluebird, and western bluebird.  By the time we left Colorado we had 316 species.  In the Pacific Northwest we got band-tailed pigeon, brandt’s cormorant, black oystercatcher, red-necked grebe, and purple finch.  By the time we got back to Colorado on our return trip, we had 378 birds.  We continued to pick up new birds on the trip south, juniper titmouse, townsend’s solitaire, prairie falcon, scaled quail, gambel’s quail.  Now we’re home, with 394 birds.  Only six more and we’ll be at 400!  Of course they won’t come so fast now that we’re not traveling through different habitats each day.  We’ll need some rarities.  There has been a northern jacana reported at one of the birding spots nearby.  Maybe it will still be there tomorrow and we can pop over and get it.

 

Judy was awesome.  She did all the heavy lifting.  She hooked and unhooked all the utilities at each stop.  She hooked and unhooked the towcar every time.  She carried all the groceries.  She did most of the driving in the car.  I did all the heavy watching, and rested my neck. 

 

It was a great trip.  And it’s great to be home.