On Sunday, August 18th I encountered a large number of migrating shorebirds
on the mudflats of Warm Beach within Port Susan (south of Stanwood around
the diked mudflats of the south fork of the Stillaguamish). I walked the
mudflats at low tide for several miles and then went back and kayaked the
area at high tide in the evening. The weather was clear, sunny and about
75 F.

The most amazing encounter was 3 BLACK TURNSTONES picking at barnacles on
stones in the midst of several miles of mudflats. Our family has a cabin
here and in 10 years of August migrations, I have never seen turnstones out
on the mudflats. I relocated them later with a group of 50 Black-bellied
Plovers, about 50% of which were still in their worn breeding plumage.

After crossing several small streams I ran into a very large number of 24
LESSER YELLOWLEGS - a definite high count for this area. And as a nice
double-check, they were feeding with 5 GREATER YELLOWLEGS. I even managed
to get my young nephew to see the difference. On the flats I spotted 20
Least Sandpipers and 1 Western Sandpiper feeding along the stream margins.

At high tide I investigated the the large washed down logs from the spring
melt for roosting shorebirds. The favorite log by far was a large
horizontal Cottonwood tree that was sprouting vertical water branches. It
made perfect cover from the patroling Peregrine Falcon. The roost
contained 500 Western Sandpipers (all adult and not a Least to be found),
12 Long-billed Dowitchers, 50 Black-bellied Plovers and the 3 Black
Turnstones mentioned above.

Rounded out the day with:
80 Canadian Gulls
25 California Gulls
20 Glaucous-winged Gulls
- a lack of the normally occuring Mew Gulls
50 Caspian Terns
2 + 2 Ospreys (about the 6th successful breeding year)
2 Redtail Hawks
2 Bald Eagles
40 Band-tailed Pigeons
2 Stellar's Jays sounding like the Redtails


Good Birding,

Marcus Roening
Tacoma, WA
marcus.d.roening at gsk.com