Today at the Beach Park and also visible from the fishing pier were 8
Western and 4 Least sandpipers plus 2 fairly ragged-looking Killdeer. A
Pigeon guillemot (probably summered here and may have nested closeby) was
seen flying away from the south end of the Marina rock jetty. It was a
very good study of the small sandpipers as they foraged along the Sound's
edge at fairly high tide (mid-morning.)

I returned from the Univ of Maine at Machias Institute for Field
Ornithology Warbler Workshop earlier this week, and, in a word, the
workshop was MAGICAL. I'll post the various areas and sightings of our
field work over the next few days. It was quite a privilege to add 26 new
birds to one's life list. It was even more wonderful that we remained
long enough or encountered many species often enough to learn a fair bit
about songs, habitats, nesting, and various behaviors (plus the daily
seminars and lectures after our field work.) We were also documenting
butterflies and would have like to have had some dragonfly expertise, as
there were many exquisite species in this buggy-bog country of the
northeast coast of Maine and southern New Brunswick.
More later,
Maureen Ellis me2 at u.washington.edu Univ of WA and Des Moines, WA