Tweeters:

Anne Winskie and I did our annual fall survey on Sunday, Sept. 29 at
Graysmarsh near Sequim. I intentionally chose a later date than the
previous four fall surveys to try for a different "snapshot", which we did
get. We found 102 species total for the day, down from 114 on the May 18
survey.

Although we were unable to find any species new for the Graysmarsh list, we
did find a few notables, the highlight being an imm.
N. GOSHAWK that flew low over the beach dunes at mid-day. This was only the
second for Grays, the first an adult on the CBC about 7 years ago. A
WANDERING TATTLER was heard-only at the south end of the beach near dawn;
this species has been recorded once previously also. Otherwise shorebirds
were few (6 species).

Lingering summer species seemed to be a main theme for the count this year,
including:

CINNAMON TEAL 1
Violet-green Swallow 53 (seemed high number for so late in year)
N. ROUGH-WINGED SWALLOW 1 (in w/previous)
SWAINSON'S THRUSH 2
YELLOW WARBLER 4 (good number for so late in season)

On the other side of things, were a couple of early arrivals:

HERRING GULL 1 (1st-winter, off south beach on water)
BUFFLEHEAD 1 (female, slightly early, Anne on inner marsh)

Other than less common species, we had high counts of several species
(including a few record-highs for our surveys) which seemed to mark peak
fall passage. Among this group were: Pacific Loon, RN Grebe, Surf Scoter,
Common and Hooded Mergansers, RT Hawk, and Savannah Sparrow. Migration in
the forest seemed to have largely concluded (we were unable to find any late
Empids or W. Tanager), but we did find 6 warbler species, mostly
Yellow-rumps but also one Black-throated Gray and (out on the marsh) 3 Com.
Yellowthroats, neither of these running late yet, however.

Last note: I did better than usual on owls, getting 4 individuals of 3
species, the highlight being 2 N. Saw-whet Owls.

Scott Atkinson
Lake Stevens
mail to: scottratkinson at hotmail.com


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