Solace on solstice: Birds offer their own holiday magic

Author and naturalist Lyanda Lynn Haupt of West Seattle will bring out the birder in you. Her sparkling eyes, gentle enthusiasm and writerly curiosity combine to subtly convince us of the importance of birds in our everyday lives.

"Birds will give you a window, if you allow them. They will show you secrets from another world, fresh visions that, although avian, can accompany you home and alter your life," she wrote in her book, "Rare Encounters with Ordinary Birds." We recently met on a sunny stretch of sand not far from her home on just such an avian vision quest. Haupt was keen to show off some of the more charming of Alki Point's winter visitors, surfbirds and black turnstones, both rock-loving sandpipers that flock together amid seaweed and barnacles adorning the boulder beach bulkhead. Usually found along rocky ocean beaches, a small group returns to this area each winter.

"You almost always hear the black turnstones before you see them — they're always chattering. You can dangle your legs over the edge of the cement wall and watch them, they let you get that close," she said as we worked our way east along the near deserted strand of Alki Beach Park in West Seattle.

Turnstones live up to their names, flipping over rocks in search of crustaceans, barnacles and limpets. Also well-named, surfbirds stand firmly on bright yellow legs, withstanding waves that look big enough to topple their plump little bodies into the sea. Surfbirds have the longest and narrowest winter range of any North American breeding bird — from Alaska to the Strait of Magellan in Chile, a ribbon stretching almost 11,000 miles. This shore-hugger ventures inland only a stone's throw above the tide line.

All winter long

As we walked toward the bulkhead, Haupt scanned the Sound, her expert eyes drawn to a hazy group of dots that looked to be about halfway to Bainbridge Island. Affirming her hunch with binoculars, she set up her birding scope.

"There's a flock of Westerns bobbing along out there."

A peek through the lens revealed a flock of Western grebes — sleek diving birds with elegant, swanlike necks — that prefer offshore paddling.

Closer to the beach she pointed out a group of surf scoters, often confused with puffins due to their large orange beaks, along with some buffleheads — our smallest duck, the male has a telltale white head. There were also a few horned grebes, named for breeding plumage featuring yellow tufted feathers behind their eyes.

"The thing I absolutely love about this place is that these birds breed in Alaska on the Yukon Delta and up into the Arctic," Haupt said. "It's a rare gift to have this urban area be the winter home of these wild animals that you don't have to travel far to see."

In her writing Haupt celebrates the accessibility of birds in your own backyard, no matter, or despite, their ubiquity. She's currently working on the final paragraphs of her first draft of a new book on crows (with a working title of "Crow Planet," it's slated to be published by Little Brown in March 2009).

"I've read a ton of the literature on crows, and yet watching them on any given day I'll find them doing something that doesn't fit in with what's known by ornithologists," she said. "People interested in nature usually think they need to go on an expedition to really see things. What's so lovely about where we live is that we can bring observing the wild into our everyday lives."

A natural habit

That's been the theme of Haupt's birding ever since she started a family nine years ago. In nurturing her passion close to home, her most frequented and well-loved birding spots are Camp Long, Lincoln Park and here at Alki, just minutes from her office window.

"It's a change in attitude: Rather than observing the wild being something we go out to do, it's something we incorporate into our daily routine," Haupt said as she pointed to a lone double-crested cormorant diving and surfacing, its long, hooked bill ready to snare another herring. At the water's edge a baby (almost completely gray) glaucous-winged gull pleaded loudly with its mother.

Another plus of winter birding here (and in other Puget Sound parks) is that identification is easier because the possibilities are limited. "It's great for beginning birders and confidence-building," said Haupt. Differentiating between cormorant species can be confusing, but only the double-crested species is found here. The horned grebe looks maddeningly like the eared grebe, but Haupt teaches the alliterative mnemonic: "horned are here." Even everyday Janes can ID the glaucous-winged gull; if it's a largish, pink-legged bird with only gray and white feathers: Bingo. (Check them out cockily preening on the Alki Art Studio rooftop.)

As we approached the bulkhead steps, Haupt looked eagerly east, listening intently for her turnstones. Instead we found a flock of 30 Barrow's goldeneyes, dapper black-and-white birds with white crescents behind their eyes. After admiring their iridescent head feathers, we continued walking along the top of the bulkhead, peering hopefully down on the rocks below.

"I wonder where they are," she pondered, enjoying surfbird and turnstone antics in her mind's eye.

Though our "grail" birds never did appear, the quest itself was satisfaction enough. As Haupt put it, "I come down here and the sound of the water and seeing the birds are broader signs of life that are immediately settling. Watching birds tending to their existence brings me peace and ties me into the solstice season in a more meaningful way."

Freelance writer Kathryn True of Vashon Island is a regular contributor to Northwest Weekend. Contact her through her Web site: www.kathryntrue.com