Subject: (Dead) shearwaters; (live) shorebirds
Date: Jul 21 14:02:18 1999
From: Bill Smith - pwsmith at techline.com


Hi, folks. My wife and I periodically salvage beached bird
specimens for a state study. Today we picked up two freshly
dead shearwaters, one Sooty, one Short-tailed. Anyone who
thinks that only one or the other is offshore here at any
given time may be interested by this.

The Short-tailed really should be called 'Short-billed', for
its bill is about 20% shorter than the Sooty's, and this is
very noticeable at least on the dead birds. Other
measurements are about 10% less (although I suspect the
difference in body size, which we didn't measure, is greater
than 10%).

For those thinking about coming down for shorebirds, there
were perhaps close to 50,000 feeding today on Copalis Beach
just south of Conner Creek, about 1-2 hours after high tide.
Most were Western Sandpipers, but Sanderlings and
Semipalmated Plovers were well-represented, and there were
small numbers of Ruddy Turnstones with one lone Black.
Numbers of Caspian Terns and Heermann's Gulls have built to
a hundred or more. At Bill's Spit in Ocean Shores just
before high tide yesterday, there were over 250 Whimbrels,
about 40 Long-billed Curlews, a smattering of Marbled
Godwits, and plenty of Short-billed Dowitchers and a few
Black-bellied Plovers. I'm sure I haven't mentioned
everything, but we haven't noticed any rarities to this
point.

Happy birding!
------------------------------------------------------------
P W (Bill) Smith
Grays Harbor, Washington USA
pwsmith at techline.com