Subject: (Fwd) Kennedy Creek Estuary, Mason County, Washington on Augus
Date: Aug 12 21:51:11 2001
From: Douglas Canning - dcanning at nisquallyestuary.org


Compared with the past few weeks when I was seeing shorebirds here
numbering in the low hundreds, the few I saw today were a surprise. I
did not even see any in flight over Schneider Creek estuary.

Date: August 11, 2001
Location: Kennedy Creek Estuary, Mason County, Washington

Temperature: 18 - 21 degrees celsius
Prevailing wind speed: 1-5 km/h
Percentage of sky covered by clouds: 100%
Precipitation: none

Here between 0915 and 1019 while the tide was rising from 7.8' to 9.7'
on the Burns Point gage -- when I arrived the Kennedy Creek channel
was already filled and when I left the tide flats were ~80% covered.

Birds seen (in taxonomic order):

Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) 1 [1]
Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) 12 [2]
Black-bellied Plover (Pluvialis squatarola) 3 [3]
Long-billed Dowitcher (Limnodromus scolopaceus) 1
Bonaparte's Gull (Larus philadelphia) 1 [4]
Ring-billed Gull (Larus delawarensis) 160
Caspian Tern (Sterna caspia) 3
Belted Kingfisher (Ceryle alcyon) 1 [5]
American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos) 6 [6]
European Starling (Sturnus vulgaris) 12 [7]

Footnotes:

[1] Flew off to Schneider Creek estuary.
[2] Flew off to Schneider Creek estuary.
[3] In transition and winter plumage.
[4] Juvenile.
[5] Male hunting from perch; dove once in 20 minutes.
[6] Mostly foraging on the tide flats.
[7] Mostly perched in a Douglas-fir tree.

Total number of species seen: 10

Census archived at http://birdnotes.net
------- End of forwarded message -------


*****************************
Douglas Canning
Olympia, Washington
dcanning at nisquallyestuary.org
*****************************