[obol] Yaquina Head Today

[Cindy Ashy]

Mid-day I saw a male red-shafted Northern Flicker fly into Trespass Cove and
land on the east wall (a steep vertical wet rocky wall with lots of lichens and
small thin pockets of dirt and vegetation). It is not a place I would expect to
see a flicker....I've never seen one there before and neither have the rangers
I spoke with....I will say it was unusually windless and a little warmer than
normal mid-day. It blended in perfectly with the lichen mosaic wall and I doubt
I would have ever spotted it had I not seen it fly in. It stayed for about
15-20 minutes and spent a significant amount of time feeding on a crustose
yellow lichen (or something really tiny on the lichen I couldn't make out). It
also did some "drilling" and twice broke off pieces of rock about the size of a
golf ball.

There was a Peregrine Falcon in one of the small trees on the SW corner of the
head (not the trees visable from the parking lot but the shorter trees only
visable from behind the lighthouse). It was also quite camouflaged and several
people walked by without seeing it, including birders with bins (until I
pointed it out). With the recent sightings of a Gyrfalcon, I took a very close
look and being that it didn't look quite right, I asked Janelle, a birder and
one of the rangers, to take a look. We studied it for quite a while and
consulted Sibleys and we're both quite convinced it was a Tundra, not a
Pacific, Peregrine Falcon and not fully grown. 

There were plenty of robins and Fox Sparrows around today to peak the interest
of the raptors.

There were also at least 3 Red-tail Hawks hovering about, one adult eagle on a
high branch near the gate which did a couple of quick pass overs, and another
adult eagle causing gull chaos in the south tidepool area...and after causing
the raucous sat out on a rock taunting the gulls....never saw it capture
anything.

Cindy Ashy

P.S. In trying to identify the lichens, I read that certain lichens prefer
rocks with guano for the nutrient value (no wonder Yaquina Head monoliths above
the splash zone are so rich with lichens)...it would be interesting to know if
certain lichens prefer certain bird droppings (fish eaters vs.
omnivores....alcids vs. gulls). I'm going to pay more attention to the lichens
from now on. On the east wall of Trespass Cove freshwater trickles down in
places which could spread the nutrients around in large patches. It's mostly
Pigeon Guillemots and cormorants that nest there.


 
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