Happy Autumnal Equinox! Some observations to add to those of Tweeters who
are watching developments farther up Sound.

This last weekend my husband and I went on an overnight tour with Kayak
Port Townsend, paddling from Sequim Bay State Park out to the Strait, along
the Miller Peninsula, out to Protection Island, then into Discovery Bay,
pulling out at Gardiner. Great fun, good company (and food!), and the
timing in regard to weather was perfect. Although the breeding season at
the island is over for the year, birds are on the move, either through the
area to parts south or beginning to arrive for winter. I saw my first
groups of Pacific loons and horned grebes for the season. We had "close
encounters" with curious or tolerant harbor seals and a common loon in
Sequim Bay. Saw only one rhino, also in Sequim Bay. In Discovery Bay an
immature parasitic jaeger chased a first-winter Heermann's gull practically
right over my head. They were so close in size and flew so tightly together
that at first glance they looked very nearly like two gulls having a fight
-- only the gull had a lighter colored bill and the jaeger had white
crescents in its wings (and the jaeger was the chaser, the gull the
chasee!). Additional birds of note:

Red-necked grebe
Double-crested cormorant
Pelagic cormorant
Great blue heron
Harlequin duck
Surf scoter
White-winged scoter
Bald eagle
Killdeer
Black oystercatcher
Sanderling
Bonaparte's gull
Mew gull
Glaucous-winged gull
Common tern
Common murre
Pigeon guillemot
Marbled murrelet
Band-tailed pigeon
Belted kingfisher

... and I thought I heard a late-lingering Swainson's thrush. Possibly the
best part of the birding was listening to the birds on the water at dawn.
The common loons were in chorus, every bit as haunting as on some far
northern summer lake.

-- Janet Hardin
Port Townsend, WA
wings at olympus.net