I hiked out to Sand Point, in Olympic National Park on Thursday to count sea
otters and pups. There were 4 pups across three maternal groups. While
hiking North I found a sea otter on a inshore rock kind of hunched over
funny and thought it was giving birth so I ducked behind a rock and set up
my scope at the lowest height then threw my poncho over it to make a sort of
blind then scooted out from behind the rock until I could watch the otter.
During a break to rest my eye I could see a little window down the beach and
at one point there was a wing flapping commotion about 100 feet away. I
brought up my bins to see a peregrine on top of a now twitching large gull.
The falcon stood on the back of the gull for a couple of minute, then
flapping its wings, pulled the gull over and it landed on top of it and
began plucking the breast feathers out, which went sailing down the beach
like confetti in the wind. After a few minutes the peregrine got into the
breast meat, pulling chunks out in strips. I went back and forth between
the Sea otter in the scope...Did it give birth yet? to the falcon lunching
on the gull. After several minutes the falcon took off out of my view and I
waited and watched another hour but the otter after grooming itself appeared
to be napping so I packed up only to get assaulted by wind driven hail-like
snow which was like being attacked by a machine pellet gun.

Another interesting bird observation was at the Hoh, where I got woken up by
a Pileated woodpecker whacking on a snag next to my tent. I was able to
slowly unzip the tent door and had a almost too close to focus look at this
cool bird. I got to see it actually sticking its impossibly long tongue into
some holes and then pulling it back with something large and kind of whitish
attached. The bird finally got scared away by a small group of elk who
wandered through my camp and which deftly avoided my tarp strings, much to
my relief.

Rob Sandelin
Naturalist, Writer
Snohomish County, which got 8 inches of snow in the past 2 days.......