Saturday, October 20, 2012 - Juanita Bay Park

Rudy's been on the road since October 13 and not due back until late on October 23 which will be about 12 hours before my double mastectomy surgery. I needed to get out for one last taste of freedom. I'd been wanting to get up and see my son Flynn and his wife Anna's apartment up in Kirkland, WA. They had been doing some decorating that I hadn't seen yet and they liked to bird. Hey, that's two birds with one stone right? So I got up there around 9:30am before the traffic was too bad. Their apartment looked terrific. They've been working hard to get everything in shape since they moved in earlier this year and it really has come together nicely. It's a small apartment so it didn't take too long to look over so we headed out for birding at Juanita Bay Park. I'd never been there but they were very familiar with it. The weather was cool but it wasn't raining. We took the central boardwalk first that extended into the wetland beside the bay. Guess what we saw...wood ducks! We got a great view of them. We went out to the west boardwalk and saw a great blue heron right by the trail. There were some mallards, green-winged teals and grebes on this side of the wetlands. On the bay we could see a bald eagle sitting on a piling. There were hundreds of American coots and Canadian or cackling geese on the bay along with a double-crested cormorants. We also saw a red-tailed hawk. We went out and walked along the east boardwalk and saw a towhee in the thickets. The wind was really coming up and my knee was acting up so we headed back to the car. We went over to Juanita Beach Park, but it was really windy.There were some ducks there that might have been gadwalls. We also saw a white duck that I couldn't identify. It might have been a cross between a wild and a domestic white duck. Since the wind was so bad we decided to call it a birding day and get some lunch. We ended up at a hole in the wall sandwich shop that was really good and fun. After that it was time for me to head home. Nice day.