While kayaking at Dungeness on Sunday, 23 April, I saw 3 Semipalmated
Plovers, 3 Greater Yellowlegs, 1 Short-billed Dowitcher, and maybe 50
Western Sandpipers, all of which I would have thought were migrants, among
the large numbers of Black-bellied Plovers and Dunlins and few Sanderlings,
all of which were probably the wintering crowd. I think that was the
entire shorebird presence, except for the usual pair of oystercatchers. I
was amazed (maybe even astounded, aghast, or appalled, but not quite
apoplectic) at how few migrant shorebirds there were; many more should be
there by this date.

Some interesting shorebird biology, nevertheless: I watched the pair of
oystercatchers probing for prey on the sandy beach of Graveyard Spit. I
hadn't seen that before. Also watched numerous Black-bellied Plovers pick
lugworms (Abarenicola pacifica, a polychaete) out of the mud and take them
over to the water to wash them off. That's when they became subject to
kleptoparasitism attempts by gulls. Also saw beautiful and lengthy
ritualized threat displays between Black-bellies at feeding-territory
boundaries. Boy, you see a lot when you look.

One thing there were a *lot* of were Bald Eagles, and none of the waterfowl
(thousands of brants) or gulls was able to rest very long without being
scared up by one of those big lummoxes flying over. There are going to be
a lot of nervous water birds in the post-DDT era! I kid you not; the
eagles disturbed the other birds far more than the boaters did, and there
were a fair number of the latter.

Finally, and I thought this REALLY interesting, was the fact that every
pair of gulls I identified on the gull nesting island there was mated with
a bird that looked exactly the same, whether Western, Glaucous-winged, or
intermediate. The approximately 20 pairs tallied included about 10
Glaucous-wings, 5 Westerns, and 5 intermediates. It was assortative mating
in its purest form, and I can't imagine the two species merging if that is
what is going on at other nesting sites. Westerns have increased
dramatically at Dungeness since I began going there 25 years ago; they used
to be one in a hundred.

Dennis Paulson, Director phone: (206) 756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax: (206) 756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail: dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416