Subject: Trip to Washington Coast/ North Jetty & Leadbetter Point
Date: Apr 24 11:17:00 1995
From: "Bell-McKinnon, Maggie" - MBEL461 at ecy.wa.gov



This message is especially for Chris Hill (who was also going to be in the
Long Beach area soon) but I thought other tweeters might be interested.

My husband and I visited the North Jetty (the very end!) by Fort Canby
State Park on 4/22 and saw the following birds: Pelagic cormorants, surf
scoters, Oregon juncos, violet-green swallows, 8-10 surfbirds, 3 black
turnstones, and 2 gray-tailed tattlers. My husband was wondering about the
tattler - could it have been a wandering tattler instead? He felt pretty
confident about keying it to a gray-tailed (based on something I can't
remember now!!!) but I'd be interested in any comments from others out there
in birdland.

We then went on to the Ilwaco Marina breakwater and saw: common loon,
numerous cormorants (way out there.....) that appeared to be in a feeding
frenzy with lots of diving and splashing, 2 adult and 2 immature bald eagles
(the immatures looked like they were being chased by the adults!),
canvasbacks, American widgeons, greater and lesser scaups, great blue heron,
Northern pintails, and mergansers.

We then hit Leadbetter Point at around 5:30 pm to wait for high tide (around
8pm). I was a little disappointed in that we didn't see "large" numbers
of birds - the largest group we saw was about 150-200 long-billed
dowitchers; also a few black bellied plovers, lesser yellowlegs, common
mergansers, horned and eared grebes, brant, pintails, green-winged teal,
eurasian widgeon, buffleheads, bald eagles, great blue heron, and a female
Calliope hummingbird and chestnut-backed chickadees in the parking lot. We
also saw what we thought was a merlin; it made a few passes at the
dowitchers disturbing them mightily. We talked to the State F&W agent for
the area later and he told us that it was probably an immature peregrine and
that one had been banded in the area a few days (??) earlier. The bird we
saw appeared smaller than what is listed for a peregrine in our bird book
and also didn't have as dark and distinctive a hood and mustache. Any
comments about this tweeters??????????

In both places we saw numerous groups (of about 20-30 birds each) of Canada
geese heading north.

The house we were renting had a very vocal female Wilson's Warbler singing
from the top of a lodgepole pine and also 3 golden crowned sparrows in
brilliant breeding plumage flitting around in the gorse.

All in all it was a wonderful birding weekend for us!!!!!!!!!!

Maggie Bell-McKinnon
mbel461 at ecy.wa.gov