>I'd like to contribute something that might help answer queries such as
>this: from putting together average arrival and departure dates for
>seasonally- various birds in Vancouver BC I've noticed that, for most
>species, juvenile shorebirds arrive pretty consistently about three weeks
>after the first returning nonbreeders. I wish I could tell you what the juv
>arrival of GRYE is (my hunch is that it's somewhere in the July 15--25
>range), but unfortunately sighting records for the past decade and a half
>mostly show just numbers, not plumage state, so it's impossible to
>distinguish between sightings of adult and juvenile birds from the records
>here. It's to build up a body of data detailed enough to answer queries like
>this that I encourage local birders to report plumage state as well as
>number of birds.

>From specimen record, earliest juvenile GRYE on coast 22 July (King Co.,
WA), in interior 16 July (Okanagan Landing, BC) (Washington Birds 1: 27-32,
1989). Not a bad hunch, Michael. The 16th is the earliest record of a
juvenile shorebird in Cascadia except for a 12 July Semipalmated Sandpiper
(Condor 85: 99-101, 1983).

>David and Dennis, five'll get ten that that at June 10 & 11 your birds were
>too early for this species' migration and was summering, but a single bird
>after (guesstimate) June 20 would be as likely to be a southbound bird as a
>'floater': impossible to call. By June 25--30, I'd say surely a migrant,
>part of a larger movement. Were there more in subsequent days?

No further info on my bird, but if there were a way to prove it, I'd bet
that five (or is it ten?) that these birds could in fact be migrants, based
on what I wrote before, that if a few Western Sandpipers (which breed no
closer than the Yukon River delta in Alaska) can be down here by 19 June,
then a (failed) postbreeding Greater Yellowlegs (which breeds not that far
over the border to the north) could do so by 10 June. I agree that
extremely few postbreeders should be in this area before 20 June, and I've
usually used the period 11-20 June to search for records of truly summering
birds.

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