Greetings All

Dennis Duffy and I spent yesterday doing our old haunts on Whidbey and
visiting some new locations at the Samish Flats and Camano Island.

The change in weather dropped off a goodly number of birds. Oddly, my
previous experience has been that, mostly, these fronts seem to clear
Crockett Lake of birds rather than deposit new ones. Happily, yesterday was
different.

We started off at Cultus Bay, then went to private areas near Useless Bay,
then to Crockett Lake, Penn Cove, Swantown Lake, and Dugualla Bay. Notably,
Swantown Lake has great looking habitat this fall but has been devoid of
shorebirds -- this is totally baffling as this pond is typically awesome when
the water levels are right. After leaving Whidbey, we went to the West 90
Ponds on the Samish Flats. We found four ponds, all west and south of the
parking area. The farthest pond is near the dike. These ponds look like they
will be tremendous for shorebirding. Hopefully, the plan is to maintain them
as shorebird habitat and not allow too much edge vegetation to grow up.
Finally, we hit English Boom. I found out about this spot from Hal Opperman.
Take the main road onto Camano Island and then go north on Good Road. Good
Road takes a 90 turn to the west when it approaches Skagit Bay. Follow this
turn and continue until you reach a dinky airport. Turn right here onto Moore
Road and follow it to the shore of Skagit Bay, where there is a small parking
area. We hit the tide just as it was going out, and there was a nice
collection of Western Sands, Semi Plovers, plus a juv Wilson's Phalarope -
only the 2nd I've seen in a tidal habitat in Washington. There are a number
of Purple Martin boxes here as well, and we had at least 12 martins there.

We could not locate any rocky shorebirds on Whidbey :(

Here are the shorebird totals

Black-bellied Plover: only 2
Semipalmated Plover: 60
Killdeer: 35, and mostly noisy
Greater Yellowlegs: 35
Lesser Yellowlegs: 31 (15 of which were at Samish Ponds)
Spotted Sandpiper: 1
Sanderling: 3
Semipalmated Sandpiper: 3, all juvs at Crockett Lake
Western Sandpiper: 1000 (somewhat on the low side, only 1 juv)
Least Sandpiper: 100 (mix of ads and juvs)
Baird's Sandpiper: 1 near Useless Bay, 2 at Crockett -- all juvs.
Pectoral Sandpiper: 2 near Useless Bay, 1 at Crockett -- all ads. Good find
for July
Dunlin: 1 ad in alt plumage near Useless Bay. Has been there for 2+ weeks.
SB Dowitcher: 2 ads
LB Dowitcher: 200 -- all adults
Wilson's Phalarope: 4 juvs at Samish Ponds, 1 juv at English Boom. Ties my
highest
count for fall on the westside.
Phalarope sp?: 30-40 off Cultus Bay.


Also, re: the Whiskered Auklet report. Dennis Duffy had also thought of the
"fish in beak" theory for the drooping whiskers. I think that this is likely
a very good explanation. A couple of the Rhinos we saw yesterday had bills
that looked fairly reddish.

Cheers
Steven Mlodinow
SGMlod at aol.com
Everett WA