"You forget that this happens everyday"

The not-so-disappointing Cape Disappointment.

Gotta keep 'grammin'

"You forget this happens everyday," one of the people in our group said as we were watching the sun go down. She's right. Sometimes I go about my day and forget I'm just on a rock floating in space. Sometimes, I get stuck in one gear and forget to slow down. All you can do at that point is to tell yourself to look up and soak it in.

Jetty Out

These are pelicans, very graceful flyers and hunters. It was a joy to watch them dive to catch fish.

Lighthouse

Look at that coastline.

Rainbow Backpacks: Super lightweight and comes with ample amounts of sunshine and happiness. 

Coming soon to a sunny day near you. 

COASST Interns!!

For science!

This gives "birding" a whole new meaning.

Adrienne measures the wing length, going from the wrist to the end of the outermost primary.

Using the awesome field guide that COASST put together to see what we found.

It was a Large Immature Gull Wing :)

Liz shows us how to get the bill measurement. 

We tag all of our finds so that we know if something is a re-find in the future. 

This particular adult gull is tagged (read from closest to the heart, out) black, white, and red, or #901.

Our last find was a Sooty Shearwater. These birds are known to have the longest migration routes ever recorded: 39,000 miles!! They are rarely seen from shore unless we find them ON shore! 

"'There was no consensus,' Wright says,'but I think it was just a tie to the community. And a tie to the land. There's something spiritual and really unique to that place.'"

- Claire O'niell, A Joy Ride Down America's Loneliest Road: The Picture Show : NPR

The Pacific

This is going to be the first post in a series of photos that covers the COASST intern field trip I took two weeks ago. COASST is a citizen science project that began at UW 15 years ago, designed to monitor seabird numbers that washed up on the shore of Washington state. Eventually the project expanded to what it is now, consisting of more than 1,000 volunteers up and down the West coast from Alaska all the way down to California. Usually the interns are in the office managing data that gets sent in from our volunteers, so a trip to the ocean was a nice change of pace. Pretty much just a good excuse to spend the weekend beaching and camping. 

The Pacific Ocean underneath a perfect Washington summer day. I love this place. 

Sandy beaches really do exist..

Kelp! I need somebody. Kelp! Not just anybody. Keeelp!

This isn't so bad, I guess.

We scour up and down the beach for dead birds to measure and identify. Over 15 years of data later, you begin to get an idea of what is "normal" for a region so if something big and scary like climate change comes along, you can get a better sense of how much an effect it is having on our coastlines. 

There will be actual dead birds in the next installment. Get excited.

The Fourth

I'm in the middle of editing a ton of photos from three different trips. In the meantime, have a watermelon slice.