Hi Tweeters,

Dusted off the 'scope and took in some shorebirds at the Iona Is. Settling
Ponds last night. Present were:

500-550 Western Sandpipers (WESA)
Approx only, three ever-shifting flocks thanks to the Killdeers that were
either panic-stricken all the time or just like watching the little guys get
up and fly--when is Modern Science going to get off its duff and invent a
silence pill for Killdeers?)
All but about 150 in definitive alternate; of the 150 alternate 1 birds,
about 20 were visually indistinguishable from def. basic, the rest a dog's
breakfast of alternate WESA plumage features. By bill-length, about 80% were
definitely female, the rest indistinguishable except for 6 stub-billed birds
I'm sure were males.

7 Semipalmated Sandpipers (SESA)
Only 3 (2f 1m) in classic def alt, the other 4 in varying degrees of alt 1
scruffiness. On bill-size, 2 males, 2 females clear, 3 indistinguishable.

3 Least Sandpipers (LESA)
Don't know how to age alt. plumaged LESA visually, so just alt

2 Greater Yellowlegs (GRYE)
Likewise: both alt

2 Lesser Yellowlegs (LEYE)
Likewise: both alt

2 Spotted Sandpipers (SPSA)
def alt, presumably with young
And here let there be public honor to the swing shift guys at the Iona
Sewage Treatment Plant: on 6.25, when told of the plight of three
just-hatched SPSA chicks that were sinking into the mud of one of the
settling ponds, they all mobilised to help save the chicks, though their
attempts were ultimately unsuccessful. These guys were great.

At Iona there's a bonus which never fails to give me a hair-prickling
thrill. You can actually *see* the southbound shorebirds (mostly WESA/SESA)
arriving. If you scope or use your bins to look high up into the
northwestern sky, you can pick up small flocks as they descend from
altitude, some so far and high at first sight you may suspect you're looking
at small swarms of midges. You can guess what kind of flight they've had,
too, by whether the first thing they do upon landing is begin to feed
ravenously, or fall asleep the instant they feel ground beneath them.

Going on past patterns, there should be a big influx of new shorebirds on
Sunday or Monday when a low currently in the Gulf of Alaska moves down over
the weekend. The lows tend to stop them in their tracks, then they hitchhike
down on the northwesterlies behind the cold front.

During periods of high pressure, I bet a lot overfly the Fraser and Skagit
Deltas, not stopping until Gray's Harbor, South Jetty of the Columbia, or
even further south. Trying to figure out how that Rufous-necked Stint
(RNST), which at this time of the year seem to travel with the first wave of
nonbreeding WESA, got to S. California so quickly, only 3 days after our own
WESA, etc. arrived on 6.24.

Rob Butler's work has shown that the average layover time here for a small
calidris sandpiper is 5 days for it to rest and stoke up, and that some if
not most travel on the jet streams. My hunch is that the RNST went straight
there from either southern Alaska or the Stikine Delta, a fairly-recently
discovered staging area.

Michael Price
Vancouver BC Canada
michael_price at mindlink.bc.ca