A Day on the Beach

 Yesterday, June 2nd,I spent the whole day at the coast... at the delightfully cool coast. It was in the high 80s at home and I don't "do" hot weather well. Or at all. Johnny, perhaps because of his mid-western upbringing, loves the heat.  He stayed home and worked outdoors in the heat while I surveyed for Black Oystercatchers (BLOY) on the cool and clear (after the morning fog burned off) and windless beach. Here's my story in photos... First, at the cove at Road's End in a low tide...

The high cliff wall at entrance to cove had these pretty yellow flowers blooming in cracks

Up close they turned out to be Monkey Flowers, a mimulus that likes moisture. Maybe water runs down those cracks.

The rocky and high passage into the cove

The BLOY nest rock in the distance... in the fog

Small black birds would be hard to see on this foggy rock

Up close didn't help. But I heard no sounds for over an hour, which meant they were not there. BLOY never stay quiet that long

Sunshine at last! But still no BLOY

Beautiful scenry even though the birds I was supposed to be monitoring were not present

...Until they were! They called and flew in from some place north and landed in the horizontal crack in the cliff

They hung out here for ten or more minutes, preening and just hanging around

Now the Middle Rock had good visibility, but no chicks were seen anywhere

The adults walked from their horizontal groove to the area where the nest had been (center of photo) and onward to the right and above, below those two rocky spires

They poked around in the grassy area

I hoped some chicks would appear but none did and the parents had no food as they had been preening before coming to this spot

About 15 minutes after arriving, the parents called and flew off northward toward a foraging cove.

My guess is they had lost their chicks earlier and came back to where the chicks were last hidden. I've had pairs do that before. But, of course, I cannot know for sure. Hopefully the adults will nest again, as BLOY who have lost eggs or chicks usually do. And I will make another trek into the cove. 

It was only a bit after 2 p.m. when I got back to the car, so I decided to drive onward to Cape Kiwanda and check on the BLOY who nest on the north side of Chief Kiawanda Rock and fly to the north side of the Cape to forage at low tide. That is Part Two of this day at the beach...