Since July 1st I have been visiting Kennedy Creek Estuary (Mason
County) every afternoon or evening on the rising of the tide to look
for the first arrival of peeps here. This evening (Tuesday the 4th)
marked that event with the sighting of 15 Least Sandpipers. Upon
arrival this evening I also got to spend 5 minutes watching a very
reddish Black-Tailed Deer crossing the tideflats to the high salt
marsh peninsula between Kennedy Creek Estuary and Schneider Creek
Estuary.

Birds seen today (and the range of numbers all 4 days):

Great Blue Heron 2 (1 - 2)
Mallard 0 (0 - 10)
Osprey 0 (0 - 1)
Killdeer 1 (0 - 4)
Least Sandpiper 15 (0 - 15)
Ring-billed Gull 63 (18 - 90)
Glaucous-winged Gull 7 (0 - 10)
Caspian Tern 9 (0 - 18)
Belted Kingfisher 1 (0 - 2)
American Crow 0 (0 - 3)
Tree Swallow not counted
Barn Swallow not counted
Black-capped Chickadee not counted
European Starling not counted

By the way, the best time to visit Kennedy Creek Estuary is on the
afternoon rising of the tide. This way the sun (if any) will be at
your back. Plan you visit so you'll arrive when or before the tide is
reaching 7.5' (as predicted for the Burns Point gage) and plan on
staying until the tide reaches 12.0' which is about the time 95% of
the tide flats are covered. To do this with any accuracy you'll need
a tide prediction software package such as Tides & Currents (Nautical
Software - http://www.tides.com/ ). Otherwise you can go to an on-
line tide prediction engine which includes the secondary tide gages
(like Burns Point) -- Saltwatertides.com is a good one
http://www.saltwatertides.com/ -- and interpolate the proper time
from the daily highs and lows. Nautical Software's web site includes
a service to generate hourly tide predictions in addition to daily
highs and lows, but only for "today" and "tomorrow."

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Douglas Canning
Olympia, Washington
dcanning at igc.org
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