Dear Tweeters,

I finally have some tallies for the Olympic Peninsula Audubon Society's
Clallam County Birdathon/International Migratory Bird Count, held on May
13th. Sorry this is kind of old news, but I'm still receiving tallies by
mail and I might receive more. We had at least 104 counters in 56
parties, from dry Sequim to wet Forks, from pelagic boats to alpine
snowfields.

Our species total was 175 and the individual total was 25,098 birds.
This is significantly below last year's totals of 193 and 33,416, largely
because our pelagic boat was unable to go further than a couple miles
west of Tatoosh Island due to rough sea conditions. Consequently no
tubenoses nor several other pelagic species were seen this year.

Additionally, the relatively late date for this year's count (always on
the second Saturday in May) and early spring conditions seemed to greatly
reduce numbers of many species, particularly grebes, seaducks,
shorebirds, and some others. Compared with the previous six years of
counts, we had significantly low numbers of Horned, Red-necked, and
Western Grebes, Brant, scaup, Oldsquaw, goldeneyes, Bufflehead,
Red-breasted Mergansers, Black-bellied and Semipalmated Plovers, Western
and Least Sandpipers, Dunlin, and Bonaparte's Gulls. Our impression is
that many of these species made their moves to the north early this year,
causing them to dwindle by our count day.

Higher numbers occurred in many passerine migrant species, again possibly
due to the early spring and late count date. We had high numbers of
bushtits, House Wrens, Swainson's Thrushes, Yellow, Black-throated Gray,
Townsend's, and Wilson's Warblers, Western Tanagers, and Black-headed
Grosbeaks.

Of course we had some "good" birds for our count --
Semipalmated Sandpiper - 2 at Ediz Hook, with a Wandering Tattler
Wilson's Phalarope - 2 at 3 Crabs horse ponds
Purple Martin - 1 at Jamestown
Hermit Warbler - 2, plus about 10 Hermit/Townsend's hybrids at the upper
Dungeness River
Harris' Sparrow - 1 near Forks
White-throated Sparrow - 1 south of Sequim

The most abundant species: (# individuals)
Loon: Common (64)
Grebe: Western (8)
Cormorant: Pelagic (692)
Heron: Great Blue (58)
Dabbling Duck: Mallard (452)
Diving Duck: Surf Scoter (576)
Diurnal Raptor: Bald Eagle (104)
Grouse: Blue (52)
Plover: Black-bellied (100)
Sandpiper: Dunlin (407)
Gull: Olympic (Glaucous-winged X Western) (2865)
Alcid: Common Murre (2060)
Pigeon: Band-tailed (194)
Owl: Great-horned (7)
Hummer: Rufous (305)
Woodpecker: N. Flicker (57)
Flycatcher: Pacific-slope (89)
Swallow: Violet-green (841)
Corvid: crow sp. (683)
Chickadee: Chestnut-backed (267)
Wren: Winter (204)
Kinglet: Golden-crowned (151)
Thrush: Robin (1180)
Vireo: Warbling (41)
Warbler: Wilson's (264)** Very abundant!! Particularly at the west end
of the county.
Sparrow: Song (512)
Blackbird: Red-winged (346)
Finch: Pine Siskin (435)

The final tallies of all species will be posted on the OPAS web page in
the next week or so: www.olympus.net/opas

Bob Boekelheide
Sequim