Happy holidays,
Today my brother Tim and I birded the coast from southeast of Tokeland to Westport. The bird of the day was an immature Red-shouldered Hawk at Westport. It was seen on a utility wire overlooking the marsh along Montesano Ave/St. (one of the main routes into Westport) where Veterans Road intersects and ends. The bird was seen well at about 3:15 this afternoon. Our attention was immediately drawn to this bird because of: the relatively small size with overall Buteo shape, upright posture, extensive white markings on wing coverts, secondaries, and primaries creating a strongly spotted appearance to the back, and the bold dark and white banding of the tail . I'll spare you the rest of the description. The bird was seen from about 30 feet on a slow drive-by, then we scoped it from about 200 feet for great views. The bird seemed unperturbed by the traffic and our presence. After several minutes the bird dropped from it's perch to pounce on some unfortunate critter in the marsh. A nice way to end the day (for us, not the unfortunate critter).
Other birds seen today included 17+ Horned Larks, 2 Lapland Longspurs, and 1 large dark young peregrine at Midway Beach. Only 1 Willet and many Long-billed Curlew were at Tokeland, 3 Greater White-fronted Geese at the mouth of the Cedar River, and large numbers of Marbled Godwit were at the North River Mouth. Actually there were plenty of the common shorebirds all along the north part of the bay (my way of saying we didn't pick through all of them). At the Westport Jetty we had 6 Rock Sandpipers with Surfbirds and Black Turnstones. They were near the base on the south (surf) side. Not much to report looking out to sea, except one Red Phalarope way out between the jetties. (OK, so it was a pale gray shorebird landing on the water.) Weather was great, surf was large.
Good luck and batten down the hatches, next storm is on the way.
Bill Shelmerdine
Olympia WA
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