Catch of the Day

We have spent the last five days on the Oregon Coast in our Serenity RV in order to escape the sub-freezing cold, snow and ice in the Willamette Valley.   Temperatures were as much as 10 to 15 degrees warmer there, which enabled us to get out and do some birding. We packed up on Tuesday morning and in the afternoon drove as far as Florence where we stayed right on the bay at the Port of Siuslaw RV Park. On Wednesday, the worst of the weather when it rained all day, we moved on south to Coos Bay were we took a site in the Mill Casino RV Park with an Internet Special Price of twenty five dollars a night. Thursday the sun came out at we went birding at Mingus Park, which gave us this list.  We had lunch at SharkBites Seafood Cafe and went grocery shopping at Safeway.  The weather looked the best in Coos Bay so we stayed a second night. On Friday we went birding at Empire Lakes, which is where this Osprey photo was taken with its catch of the day, notice the fish tail hanging down. It was also the catch of the day for me in terms of bird photos.  I knew it was a real treat for us to be able to see an Osprey in the winter, because they have basically been gone from the Willamette Valley since the first part of October. In checking further and taking a closer look at the data on eBird, I discovered that Coos County is actually the only county in Oregon that has observations reported for every month of the year. Our bird list for Empire Lakes is here. We continued our adventurous day, driving on towards Charleston, but at the the corner in the road which becomes the Cape Argo Highway, a parking lot called The Hollering Place caught our attention as a place to park and have lunch next door at the Fisherman's Seafood Market.  We lucked out, they had just opened this second location and we had the Seafood Bisque, their Catch of the Day, and the best ever.