Summary: many thousand shearwaters passed north to south within half a
mile of the shore.

Long version.

While cycling the Washington coast we spent Friday Sep 15 in Seaview, a
small community between Ilwaco and Long Beach. I only connect to the
internet when at motels with phones, so this report is quite delayed.

At about 1:30pm we went down to the ocean. There was a strong south wind
blowing. This wind had been blowing since early Thursday. There was a big
flight of shearwaters passing north to south, often just outside the
breakers, less than 200 yards from shore. It was hard to estimate numbers,
but it seemed to me that there were between 5 and 10 birds a second passing
us, sometimes more. At 2pm the rate was almost as high, the difference
being there were fewer big clumps. By 2:30 the rate was down to 1 to 2
birds a second.

This means the flock was between 10 and 20 thousand birds in the time we
were there, with perhaps as many before we arrived.

Viewing conditions were not great, but it looked to me to be all sooty
shearwaters (all dark bodies, at least).

Brent