Subject: oystercatcher not caught
Date: Jan 26 11:00:50 1998
From: Dennis Paulson - dpaulson at mail.ups.edu


Hi tweets,

On Sunday morning we kayaked in the area whence the Am. Oystercatcher was
reported, from the I-5 bridge over Ebey Slough out to the north end of
Jetty Island and back, and no sign of such a bird. It's a big area, and
even as conspicuous a bird as an oystercatcher could elude notice fairly
easily. Not to mention being 100 miles away by now.

I have to add to Michael Price's commentary about oystercatcher possibilities.

Michael didn't mention that Japan/Russia is a much more likely source for
Eurasian Oystercatchers in this region (although there are no records of
those birds on the east side of the Pacific).

The Eurasian and American Oystercatchers are easy to distinguish. The
former is black above, the latter brown. As Michael wrote, the lower back
of the Eurasian is white, while the lower back of the American is brown,
the same color as the rest of the back. The Baja race of the American
Oystercatcher shows less white in flight than the Atlantic coast race, but
it's not a great difference.

I take it there has been no further documentation of the bird.

Dennis

Dennis Paulson, Director phone 253-756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax 253-756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416
http://www.ups.edu/biology/museum/museum.html