TWEETS,
We were out at Cape Flattery today with Carol Strohmeyer and Michael Farr.
We were walking out to the observation platform and were at the south
facing observation deck just before the main platform. Carol noted
sandpipers on the rocks below. We were looking down on a flock of 18 ROCK
SANDPIPERS. When I say looking down, it was close to straight down and
while easy to see with binoculars it was extremely hard to get a telescope
trained on them. I could never get the Questar on them but we had great
looks at all but the bellies through Carol's Bushnell.
Arriving home late tonight and looking at Dennis Paulson's, Shorebird's of
the Pacific Northwest, I see that this is 4 days later than his last
record. He also says we should be trying to tell which subspecies we were
looking at. We watched them for some time (about a half hour) as they were
Life birds for Michael and probably Carol. About 4 were very light on head
and chest with a distinct ear patch and much rusty on the mantle and
scapulars. At the time I presumed that these were the birds in full
breeding plumage and the others were still in winter plumage. The legs of
all that I saw were dull yellowish. The bills of most, if not all showed a
surprising amount of yellowish at the base. This was a stumbling block for
convincing the others that these were ROCKS as the Field Guide with us was
western Pete which shows none. We all saw the tail pattern as they would
fly from one rock to the other and I saw the longer tail than wings. Due to
our fixation on the bills, we all saw the length of the bill as eliminating
SURFBIRD. I do not remember any individuals not having the ear patch.
However, the birds were too far away to pick out the earpatch with
binoculars and my time on the scope was limited as they were lifers for the
others. Not the details that Dennis would want but that is the best I can
do.
Other birds sighted of interest were 900 COMMON MURRES (a raft of 800 and
a raft of 100 plus smaller flying flocks). and 5 TUFTED PUFFINS. Also of
interest was that the traditional north Tatoosh Is. nesting ledges for the
PELAGIC CORMORANTS were empty but the birds were on the mainland ledges.
All I can think is that the Tatoosh birds have finished nesting earlier
than the mainland ones or some storm wiped out the nests of the island
birds. Does any one know when the PELAGICS usually fledge?
Along the Waatch a VIRGINIA RAIL was calling and a GREEN HERON flew over
and perched briefly. At the Senior Center was one MARBLED GODWIT.
Note to Hal and Doug. My phone will not allow me to talk directly to the
BIRDBOX. If you think this is of interest, please put it on but I would
edit out the plumage observations and thoughts about no PELAGICS on the
Tatoosh ledges.

Bob Norton
Joyce (near Port Angeles), WA
norton36 at olypen.com