At 02:37 PM 7/16/96 -0700, you wrote:
>Jon. Anderson wondered about the
>> status of murres moving along the coast into the Strait of Juan de Fuca
>and around the San Juans.
>

Jon. I just completed a sailing trip from Port Townsend to Waldron and
found Common Murres to be very abundant. We did not keep track of numbers
but anytime we were over deep water or tide rips there were always flocks
(10-40) on the water. They mostly seemed to be feeding pretty heavily, and
it was a common sight to have a group pop up out of nowhere after a long
dive. I would guess we saw a thousand or two with more in the San Juans
(Rosario Straits) than the straits. They were also common on a crossing two
weeks ago to Cattle Pass though I have no memory of the numbers or how it
compared to this latest crossing. (It was in a speed boat and attention was
riveted to the water.)

People interested in the birds of the straits should consider the Port
Townsend-Friday Harbor boat (Puget Sound Express) which spends 20 minutes at
Smith Island and some time at a couple of the rocks off the south shore of
Lopez (on the PT to Friday harbor leg only). They also commonly find orcas
on the return trip. A friend works on the boat and said they are often
seeing tufted puffins near Smith.

On the trip north we stopped by Cypress Island and looked in on the Peregrin
nest. The pair appears to have successfully fledged a chick this year. At
least we saw three birds with two of the birds executing the transfer of
what looked to be a swallow. The receiving bird then seemed to have a
difficult time flying with the payload and stayed low to the water. The
whole scene was so action packed that I did not even think to look at plumage.

One of the birds was often giving a very repetitous cry while flying. We
originally thought this might be because of our presense in the area but it
made the same call over a very large area and it was only one of the birds.
(we were hiking on a trail which is closed from Jan 15 to July 14 for the
peregrins, but from now through the end of summer is heavily used.) We
eventually wondered whether it might be the younger bird begging. Any ideas?

Michael Kennedy <mikken at daka.com>
Port Townsend, WA, USA