Hello All,

Finally, birds are arriving and/or passing by the Des Moines WA Marina and
Beach Park areas. So-far generally common birds, but are not commonly
seen here during the summer.

On September 1, 1996:

Two juvenile Common Terns diving and feeding close to shore just north of
the fishing pier.

3-5 noisy Killdeer on the beach (PM very low tide); no other shore birds
seen, but those would be rare and brief anyway because of the numbers of
people.

A pair of Double-crested Cormorants that flew on to the area between
Saltwater Park beach and Salty's Restaurant (I was watching from the
Des Moines fishing pier). We usually have up to dozen winter roostees on
the totem poles at the entrance to the Marina plus a couple of pelagics
(at least we did last winter).

A small flotilla of wary green-winged teal amongst the hoards of resident
mallards...these tame mallards provided a good study of the molting
appearance in the males this season; my first time to be able to
scrutinize the changes and observe the bill differences between the male
and female temporary look-a-like condition.

A solitary and probably migrating south-bound sharp-shinned hawk just
above the first ridge east of the Des Moines marina district. It was
being dive-bombed by hoards of barn swallows and a few violet-greens.

The violet-green swallows left the proximate Marina area 2-3 weeks ago;
only the barn swallows remain-there was a bountiful hatch of them this
year from the nest colony under the Marina docks.

A few white-crowned sparrows have shown up; these stay in the shrubbery
around the condo-complexes through the winter.

There were additional gull species to our almost exclusively
glaucous-winged semi-domestic residents. Several of the medium-sized
juvenile gulls had decidedly pink (not fleshy-colored, but PINK)-bills
with black tips and also PINK legs. These were generally over-all light
appearing very light silvery-grey mantles/ whitish heads and moderate
brown scalloping on the body and very long-tipped (extended far beyond tail)
dark brown to brownish-black wings plus dark eyes.

They were intermediate in size to the accompanying larger glaucous-winged
gulls. There were also Mew, California and Ring-billed gulls. The Nat.
Geo. Guide was not as much help as Peterson's Western Guide. He stated
that there are seven species of gulls with pink bills and pink legs during
the 2nd year. The bills were larger and not quite as refined as the Mew
gulls, and the birds were closer in size to the different year-closeby CA
gulls with grayblue-green legs. Are these pink-billed/pink legged
ones 2nd-year CA gulls or a hybrid of some kind? Can somebody
help, please?

Thank-you for any commentary..................................
I'll keep watching and sending reports as things arrive/fly by.

What a gorgeous Labor-Day weekend!

Maureen E. Ellis, me2 at u.washington.edu Univ of WA & Des Moines WA