I'm not getting Tweeters right now, so if you respond, please cc me.

I was lucky enough to get to go to Tatoosh Island last week. Tatoosh is
the northwesternmost tip of the contiguous U.S., off Cape Flattery on the
Olympic Peninsula. It's owned by the Makah tribe, and I was along to help
some fellow graduate students do research on intertidal ecology there.
But when the tide was in, I was free to do what I wanted, which was mostly
birding.

Highlights for me were the oceanic birds coming by offshore, the marine
mammals (especially Steller's sea lions and my first wild sea otter), and
frankly, just being out there watching the waves break on the rocks.
Beaths the hell out of being stuck in a lab, an office, or even Discovery
Park.

Though I spent hours looking through gulls, I was surprised both by what
was there and what *wasn't* there. No Mew Gulls at all, although we
started seeing them immediately when we got back to Neah Bay.

Numbers by each species below are the highest total seen at one time, NOT
an estimate of the total number seen.

100s of Shearwaters and loons were passing by in a steady stream offshore,
traveling east to west (out of the Straight of Juan de Fuca, and into the
Pacific). In five minutes of counting:
22 shearwaters,
19 loons (>90% Pacific),
11 alcid sp. (including several species).

The List:

10 Pacific Loon
2 Red-throated Loon
Loon sp.
1 Red-necked Grebe
7 Sooty/Short-tailed Shearwater (those I could see clearly seemed to
be Sooties)
38 Brown Pelican
12 Brandt's Cormorant
15 Pelagic Cormorant
1 Great Blue Heron
55 Canada Goose
1 Scaup sp., prob Greater
8 White-winged Scoter
24 Surf Scoter
11 Harlequin Duck
18 Black Oystercatcher
1 Wandering Tattler
3 Heerman's Gull
300 California Gull
8 Western Gull
100 Glaucous-winged Gull
3 Black-legged Kittiwake
Gull sp. (prob. saw 1 Herring Gull; there were a few WG/GWG
intergrades)
2 Common Murre
5 Pigeon Guillemot
1 Cassin's Auklet (flying by; small, small-headed alcid, all dark
above with dark breast, white belly)
Alcid sp.
2 Bald Eagle (both adult)
1 Merlin (female)
1 Peregrine Falcon (one male, one female on island)
1 Short-eared Owl
2 Belted Kingfisher
20 Crow
2 Winter Wren
1 Am. Robin
40 Starling
2 Yellow-rumped Warbler
3 Palm Warbler
1 Spotted Towhee
2 Savannah Sparrow
4 Song Sparrow
1 Lincoln's Sparrow
2 Golden-crowned Sparrow
3 Fox Sparrow
18 Lapland Longspur

Christopher E. Hill
Department of Zoology
University of Washington
P. O. Box 351800
Seattle, WA 98195-1800
cehill at u.washington.edu