Christmas 2018

Somehow, this post got lost so I had to rewrite it and it will now appear after my New Year's post. 2018 was that kind of year... The Christmas season came and went in a blur of busyness.

On the day before Christmas, two adult eagles sat on the tops of tall firs by the creek all day. They are in the photo below, believe it or not. One is atop the tall fir at the far left side of the photo, above the machine shed with its canoes. The other is on the left side of the fat fir on the far right side of the photo.
 

 Here is the far left eagle zoomed in closer.

 Here is the far right eagle in the center of the photo with its white head visible. That's how I spotted it originally.

 And here it is zoomed in and blurry. They were a long way away.

We have not seen them since but they are probably fishing the creek somewhere. The full story is on my Bird's blog here https://lindafink-birdnotes.blogspot.com/2018/12/eagles-on-farm.html

On Christmas Day, we drove to Tillamook to have dinner at a restaurant with long time birding friends John and Barbara Woodhouse. We have been doing this for many years. Sadly, we will have to come up with a new Christmas Day tradition as they are in failing health and will be moving to Minnesota to live with their daughter. We savored this day with old friends.

After the Christmas dinner that none of us had to cook or clean up after, (our reason for this tradition!), we all drove together to Oceanside where I took photos of Three Arch Rocks.

The surf was high and lovely.

Then we drove to Short Beach, where Black Oystercatchers nest in the spring. The tide was covering the beach so I took photos of the south side of Cape Meares from high up at the road.

Here is the Cape Meares lighthouse, zoomed in, which is barely visible in the photo above.

Onward we drove to Cape Meares. No Black Oystercatchers or Peregrine Falcons in view this time of year... but Pyramid Rock was pretty in the wild sea.

Looking south, we could see Cape Lookout in the distance, with Short Beach on the left and one of the Three Arch Rocks on the right.

It was a grand day and we do hope to get back over there to visit before our friends leave for Minnesota.

Other long-time (but younger) friends, now living in Washington, visited on Dec. 30 for a few hours. It was wonderful to see Hazel and her daughter Kinnera, our surrogate granddaughter, who were in Portland for the weekend visiting Hazel's sister. We hiked them all over the farm but I only got one decent photo. It was great to hear about Kinnera's first year in college. My how time flies.

The older we get, the more we realize that each day is a gift to be cherished.

Here's to a healthy and happy 2019 for all.