Dennis asked

>And what happened to the reporting of bird records on tweeters? Is no one
>going birding? Is no one seeing anything worth reporting? I just got a
>letter from someone who reported seeing a couple of Elegant Terns around
>Indian and Marrowstone islands. Has anyone else seen any?

Yeah - I've wondered the same thing! Not that I object to occasional insect
or herp threads (and we haven't had a non-feral mammal thread for a while
;)

Normally I'm reticent to talk about my sightings, but yesterday and today
*might* be interesting to others. Yesterday I did go down along Oak Bay (s.
end of Indian Island). Saw no Elegant Terns - sorry. No kittiwake, either.
In the lagoon there were lots of entertaining Bonaparte's Gulls, about an
equal number of California Gulls, 14 Common Terns and one Long-billed
Dowitcher (I'm pretty sure of the species - they never vocalize for me, but
I have a permanent marker in Paulson's book and one of these years I'll
learn them well enough to nail them without a field guide).

Today walked along the Strait and had a Five Alcid Day: rhinos, murres, and
guillemots as usual, one Marbled Murrelet, and three Tufted Puffins. Seeing
puffins is definitely *not* a daily occurrence around here! Perhaps the
best sightings of the day were of murre CHICKS with their fathers. I've
been anxiously waiting for them, hoping that the Washington birds would
have at least some breeding success since the Oregon birds lost out big
time. A few eggs and chicks must have escaped predation at Tatoosh.

Also, a flock of 27 Red-necked Phalaropes flew in and landed to feed
nervously for a while at the outer edge of a kelp bed. And there were 5
Common Terns sharing perching space with Double-crested Cormorants and
Heermann's Gulls on another patch of kelp.

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