Hi Tweets:
Thais Bock and I leisurely birded two areas in Federal Way yesterday, and saw some first-of-the-season birds. We didn't leave the house until after 10 AM, which is usually a big no-no w/ Thais, who insists I get up early to really see the small birds. But in this case we were trying to catch the tide too. The last week or so the local tides have not been the best for viewing shorebirds. It's usually best to view them as the tide starts to go out so the birds are in close and are eating the small crustaceans exposed in the wet sand and mud. Unfortunately the high tides that really drop to a fairly low level are in the middle of the night. We decided to view the shores as the tide came in (something different). The weather was cloudy, but there was no rain.
We headed down Dash Point Road (SR 509) starting just south of 312th St. What Thais does first is survey Dumas Bay from the bluff up above it. We do this at the Dumas Bay Centre, which is owned by the city of Fed Way and has a theater, and a small park. It's at the sharp left turn of SR 509 near Lakota. The park used to be a Catholic Seminary and is very pretty. You park here and walk out through the park, birding as you go. At the bluff, there is a great view of the bay below. We got out the scope and checked out the gulls and birds below us. The tide was a long way out (Dumas Bay is very shallow) so we decided to go to another area before dropping down to the bay. We proceeded south on SR 509 (Dash Pt. Road) to Dash Point State Park and entered the upper area (on the east side of the road). After Labor Day they close off part of the camp sites and we birded in this area. We counted 15 species. Flocks of Blk-capped Chickadees moved through the Alder and Fir woods and near them we observed Chestnut-backed Chickadees, Gold-crowned Kinglets and our first Ruby-crowned Kinglet of the season for our area. In some nearby bushes we observed a Varied Thrush, also the first of the season. A Winter Wren came up close to us. He never sang, just did his loud Chidit call.
After we left the State Park, we headed back north on Dash Point Road and turned left at 44th Ave, the unmarked road that leads to Dumas Bay Park (a Federal Way Park). This is a wooded area (with active Heron rookery) that has a nice trail down to Dumas Bay. It's a Federal Way City Park. We walked the approximately 1/3 mile through woods down to the bay and looked for shore birds. The shorebirds were not there except for several Killdeers. But there were many American Wigeon. Off shore we saw Surf Scoters and White-winged Scoters. There were approximately 40 Mew Gulls that were mewing. A neat sound to hear. As we watched, several flocks of Wigeons took flight and wheeled about. Thais said to watch for Bald Eagles. Sure enough, we watched 3 BAEA's, two of which were beautiful adults, fly around and stir up all the birds. Only the Mew Gulls ignored them. What a show. We estimated that there were about 1000 Amer Wigeons.
The winter birds are coming back.
Carol Schulz
DesMoines
linusq at worldnet.att.net