Well the call of the mist net lured me away from the tweeters get together.

A supremely successful weekend at Ocean Shores:

Sunday: 8 sanderling banded - 4 times the previous GRAND TOTAL banded in
Washington in the last 15-20 years !!!! ;-)

What's more, I was only using 1, 2-panel, 60 foot long mist net (as I had no
idea what was out there in the dark). I even caught 2 birds when a flock of
birds hit the net when it was closed. Next time I'll use 3, 5-panel, 60 foot
nets so expect this figure to climb significantly.

I should point out that all this took place between 1am and dawn - not the
most hospitable time of day. But if anybody is interested... Catching bird
during the daytime is possible though to be honest unlikely since the nets are
not invisible and shorebirds have great vision. The bigger problem though is
the high level of activity on the beach. Nighttime is great the police patrol
the beaches keeping everybody else off, so I have 10 miles of beach all to
myself !!!!

There were about 12,000 dunlin roosting on the beaches early Sunday
morning,several hundred western sandpipers (which by all accounts should have
all flown south by now), a few short-billed dowitchers, 150 black-bellied
plover, 1 merlin and 1 sharp-shined hawk hunting dunlin - I triple checked the
ID of this one just to make sure !!! Not that surprising since back home,
sparrowhawks (the old world equivalent of sharpies) chase shorebirds quite a
lot - pretty progressive for a woodland species).

Stuart - glad to be back at work for a rest !!!