Dumb luck birding, and bike touring … it’s a great combination. When Molly and I planned the family vacation to be just prior to our bike tour, we had no idea that our vacation choice, Dungeness Bay would hold their Lavender Festival the final two days of our Olympic Peninsula stay. Heck, prior to this week I had never seen Lavender in my life.

Thus, this morning while taking a bike ride, off the bike path I spied a beautiful field of Lavender. These purplish flowers were screaming at me to get off my bike and enjoy the visual sensation. Here is a bit of what I saw.

Cycling down the bike I noticed some swallows using a bird house that did not look like tree swallows. Enter a new lifer for me … the Violet-Green Swallow … what a gorgeous bird. Perhaps in honor of the local festival the bird should be renamed to the Emerald-Lavender Swallow … seems appropriate! To get these photos by the bird house, I dismounted my bike and crawled towards the swallows, never standing up. A prone or sitting human is not so threatening.