Hello Tweeters,
Bruce LaBar, Faye McAdams, and I spotted on the tugboat which goes out
of Gig Harbor and covers all of the saltwater areas difficult to view from
shore, for the CBC. It was a wonderful day, we had higher than usual numbers
of most of the species we saw, and a few good ones. We had very high numbers
especially of alcids, which there haven't been the last few years. Since I
have the sheet at hand, here is the total count for our group:

Red-throated Loon 29
Pacific Loon 61
Common Loon 42
Horned Grebe 152
Red-necked Grebe 247
Eared Grebe 44**
Clark's Grebe** 1
Western Grebe 1712
Double-crested Cormorant 786
Brandt's Cormorant 122**
Pelagic Cormorant 144
Great Blue Heron 25
Canada Goose 7
Mallard 4
Northern Pintail 35
American Wigeon 204
Greater Scaup 2
Harlequin Duck 1 female
Long-tailed Duck 99**
Black Scoter 5
Surf Scoter 803
White-winged Scoter 33
Common Goldeneye 159
Barrow's Goldeneye 65
Bufflehead 308
Hooded Merganser 7
Common Merganser 1122**
Red-breasted Merganser 102
Bald Eagle 13 adults
Cooper's Hawk 1
Red-tailed Hawk 1
Peregrine Falcon 1
Killdeer 9
Red Phalarope** 1
Bonaparte's Gull 4219**
Mew Gull 3354
California Gull 15
Glaucous-winged Gull 28
hybrid gulls 716
Herring Gull 1
Thayer's Gull 1
Common Murre 1114**
Pigeon Guillemot 309
Rhinoceros Auklet 308
Marbled Murrelet 1
Ancient Murrelet** 23
Rock Dove 81
Northern Flicker 3
Belted Kingfisher 11
American Crow 23
European Starling 1
American Robin 7

We also found about 20 California Sea-Lions and 5+ Dall's Porpoise,
the latter scarce in this part of the Puget Sound.

Overall the CBC did very well, and had 126 species on the preliminary
tally. The weather simply couldn't have been better; partly cloudy with very
slight wind, calm waters, and fairly warm temperature. This was one of our
best years ever on the boat. That's all for now, good birding.

Charlie Wright
Birdking88 at aol.com
Sumner, WA