After we toured Tillamook Cheese, we drove the 10 miles or so out to Cape Meares. A long finger of sand dunes separates Tillamook Bay from the open ocean. We headed down a dirt road, looking at ducks and herons feeding along the shore. We were about a third of the way along the spit when the car started dinging. It was low on gas.
This was totally my fault. I had noticed we were getting low on gas before we entered the last town, but then I had forgotten all about it. The others were very cool about it. They even agreed to drive back into town and get gas while I wandered around and birded.
So there I was alone on a sand spit. What to do? On one side was Tillamook Bay, which looked like this:
By the way, that dark spot on the water is a Bald Eagle. That’s just the kind of day it was.
On the other side was a path into the sand dunes. I decided on the path, figuring that the ocean was just over the next rise.
I was wrong. What I found over the rise was another third of a mile of dunes. The sand was dry and soft, and walking was difficult. I finally crested the final dune and found this scene:
There didn’t appear to be much happening, birdwise. I stood still for a couple minutes, then noticed a lone sandpiper near the water. I walked down onto the beach. That’s when I realized that the beach was crawling with birds that were hidden against the rocks.
Here’s a close-up from that same photo. The little bird in the front with the black and white collar is a Semipalmated Plover. The larger birds in the middle of the flock with black bellies are Dunlins. The others are Western Sandpipers. I’d seen all of them before, but never in these numbers.
Suddenly, and because of nothing I did, the entire flock took off and headed out over the surf.
They were soon joined by an even larger flock that appeared suddenly from up the beach.
They circled a couple times, then flew past me.
They came in for a landing right in front of me.
And stood right where they’d started from, but facing a different direction.
I headed back across the dunes and started walking down the road. About 10 minutes later, the others arrived with a full tank of gas. I could see the obnoxious yellow car a mile away across the bay.
