Godwit Days with a New Birder
Written by Jessica Oliver 2009
Eighth grade student, Orick School
As printed in "the McKinleyville Press"
Last weekend I helped my aunt out with the Godwit Days trips. She was a kayak field guide with Kayak Zak’s for on the water bird watching. I don’t know much about birds and going along with her was so informative. I learned a lot about birds. How they sound, how to tell them apart from others, and a lot more.
On one of our trips we guided, we got out to look around for footprints and bird stuff! We found a lot. Even stuff we weren’t looking for. The stuff we saw the most often was River Otte
r tracks and Roosevelt Elk tracks. As we were looking around for stuff my aunt was explaining how cool it would be to see a killdeer nest. Guess what?!! As she was talking about that, I saved one from getting stepped on by one of the birders. This photo shows four killdeer eggs blending in with the gravel nest.
On the water we encountered a few cool things. Our group saw two River Otters, and a lot of Belted King Fishers. We even saw an Eastern Kingbird. This bird is rare to our area and only seen once in a great while.
My aunt and I also did a Stone Lagoon trip and didn’t see as many birds as we wanted to or were hoping to see.
I learned so many interesting things and now every time I see a bird I try to name it. I am looking forward to learning more about birds in the near future.