Yesterday Jim Flynn and I began what I hope other will help to make a
weekly event. We did a 1 hour seabird watch at Pt. Brown in Ocean Shores.
The format that we used was similar to Mike Patterson (would like to
acknowledge his incredible amount of work on the oregon side of Jetty
watches). We counted, not estimated birds by flyby, sitting on ocean,
sitting on rocks or sitting on beach. The following is the conditions,
equipment, weather ect..
I would like to encourage a discussion on tweeters that we make an attempt
for someone to try and cover this or Westport once a week.
Results:
Place:Pt. Brown Jetty Ocean Shores, WA. The survey was done 1/2 the way
from the end of the jetty.
Date:7/12/96
Start time:10:05, low tide was at 12:45
Weather: Partly cloudy, N Wind 5-15 Mph, ~60 degrees, outgoing tide.
Equipment used: Binoculars: Celestron Regal 8x42 and Swift trilyte 10x42.
Scopes: Kowa TSN-1 and TSN-3 with 20-60x zoom eyepieces.

Species: Flyby Ocean Rocks Beach Total
Caspian Tern 9 9
Rhinocerous Auklet 134 2 136
Pelagic Cormorant 16 8 2 24
Surf Scoter 8 9 17
Common Murre 775 10 785
Western Gull 6 5 1 12
Sooty Shearwater 68 68
Heermann's Gull 7 55 12 75
GWxW Gull 5 2 19 17 43
DC Cormorant 1 1 2
Pacific Loon 1 5 6
Common Loon 1 1
White-winged Scoter 9 9
California Gull 2 2 4
Black Scoter 1 1
Surfbirds 8 8
Brandt's Cormorant 2 2
Cassins Auklet 1 1

Totals: 1065 43 79 42 1229

At 1 hour before high tide we noticed a nice rip tide in the channel
seperating the two jetties. This was viewed from the westport jetty and
alcid numbers were astonishing, estimates were ~6,000 Rhinos, ~6,000 C.
Murres several pigeon guillemonts and over 100 sootry shearwaters, mostly
sitting in the rip tide. Again I think its a wonderful idea id Westport or
Pt. Brown could be counted on a regular basis and since I cannot do it
every weekend I would like to see who would be interested in helping in
the surveys.
Thanks,

Scott Downes
sdownes at u.washington.edu
Seattle WA