Tweets:

A couple of quick notes about a fun trip to Ocean Shores August 4 and 5.
Saw several loons off shore at the sewage plant-- including one red throated
loon. Lots and lots of sooty shearwaters, common murres, a few marbled
murrelets, and rhino auklets at the jetty. The usual gulls (plenty of
Herrman's) and semi-palmated plovers along the beach, along with lines of
brown pelicans. One very large, very dark peregrine on a snag at the game
range (note: also saw "guy" on the east counterweight of the Tacoma 11th st.
bridge on the way over-- Jim: how is the peregrine saga going these days?)
"Bills spit" was crawling with peeps and whimbrels and gulls and stuff.
Went back by there at low tide and were treated to a major herd of sea lions
with several mixed in seals.

Caspian terns were clowning about everywhere. Saw lots of their frustrating
feeding activity. Several times saw two adults with two juveniles, and one
juvey would be begging but the adult that had the prize would try to stuff
it down the other juvey, who wouldn't take the fish. Saw this same scene
several times. Do they only feed their own chicks, even when their chicks
are not hungry? Heard lots of variations on the lovely musical call notes
they make while performing these antics.

Already reported on the one strange, long-billed, alcid that I would say was
a murrelet. Don't think it was a small common murre, mainly by the way it
rode in the water and its shape was just a little more "chunky".

Returned by making an out of the way trip to the John's River. The wildlife
dept. is paving the dike trail, on the west side of the river, for about a
mile from the boat ramp. Making it wheelchair accessible to a new blind.
The elk herd was munching in the pasture there, also saw yellow warblers and
male Wilsons, as well as a very large and ugly young hairy woodpecker trying
to destroy a snag in one of the beaver ponds.

Jerry R. Broadus
Geometrix Surveying, Inc.
P.O. Box 249
Puyallup, WA. 98371