Dennis Paulson wrote:

>Hi tweets,
>
>On Saturday 22 August, while on the ferry from Edmonds to Kingston at about
>09:00, I saw an alcid fly by in front of the boat, heading north. If I had
>been in Alaska, I would have unhesitatingly called it a Parakeet Auklet, as
>it was ... [snip] ...
>This of course would be a very unusual record.... This message is mostly to
>caution people to check alcids carefully wherever and whenever you see them!

Yesterday I had a similar experience, with an alcid species much more
commonly seen in area waters, albeit at a different time of year: I saw an
Ancient Murrelet.

There was absolutely no doubt as to what species I was looking at. This
summer I have been working as a naturalist aboard the _Glacier Spirit_, a
passenger ferry/whalewatch boat running daily between here (Port Townsend)
and Friday Harbor, in the San Juan Islands. [Workdays are sometimes 12 hrs
long and the rest of my life has been busy, so I've consequently been off
Tweeters and/or merely lurking for a while.] We were on the west side of
San Juan Island, following three Killer Whales, when I spotted the murrelet
with a group of about eight Common Murres. Believe me: no one on board
--but me-- would have cared about seeing an Ancient Murrelet! I've been
keeping track of father/chick pairs of murres and on the lookout for other
alcid fledglings, so the smaller bird amongst the murres really stood out.
My binoculars glommed onto it until the bird was out of sight. It was
smaller than a murre chick, gray-backed, with a black head and chin, and a
yellow beak. Definitely not a fledgling Marbled Murrelet, either -- though
I've been gladdened by the sight of a couple of those in the last few days.

So my question to Tweeters is this: Have any of you seen Ancient Murrelets
in late summer? I know they occur here in winter, sometimes by the
hundreds, because I've seen 'em. While doing research surveys/counts of
Marbled Murrelets in Oregon, I did run across the odd account of Ancient
Murrelets occurring there in small numbers, primarily in late summer. In
1991 a member of our research crew (who was not a birder in the usual
sense) came to me with a report of murrelets she couldn't be sure of, and
presented a spot-on description of Ancients. I have not seen any real
mention of them in conventionally-accepted literature or birding accounts,
but strongly suspect they occur in late summer more often than we know.

Information would be gladly accepted -- and I would definitely like to add
to Dennis' caveat about being careful to check alcids....

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