Hello tweets,

Netta and I took a trip to the coast Friday and Saturday, scouting for
motels for an ABA shorebird workshop I'll be conducting out there next
summer. Weather variable, including sunshine, fog, and rain, some NW to W
wind. Somewhat disappointing look for late-migrating shorebirds. They were
probably out there, but we didn't find many more of them than we did motels
(well, that's at least a bit of an exaggeration). It's unexpected when the
largest number of any shorebird species you see is the 200+ Marbled Godwits
at Tokeland! There were also 15 Willets and 2 Whiimbrels roosting there on
5 Oct.

Second most common were Black-bellied Plovers and Sanderlings, but <200 each
on ocean beaches from Long Beach to Ocean Shores. With them were much
smaller numbers of Dunlins and Western Sandpipers. At Leadbetter Point with
small numbers of Black-bellies were a juvenile Red Knot and a juvenile
Short-billed Dowitcher, but vanishingly few birds at that classic shorebird
venue. There was a USFWS vehicle on the beach with two people apparently
conducting shorebird surveys. It would be nice if that info were shared with
the rest of us in real time instead of being filed away in government
archives. . . .

At Midway Beach (Grayland), there were 4 juvenile Pacific Golden-Plovers on
5 Oct. They switched from the roosting mode to the feeding mode as we sat
and watched them, and I was struck as always by how much plumage variation
there is among four individuals of the same species, same plumage.

There were 30 Greater Yellowlegs roosting at the high school nature
trail/boardwalk in Ocean Shores. Perhaps one of the more interesting
sightings was the very tight flock of about 30 Killdeers that wheeled in
from the north and landed on the Ocean Shores golf course on 5 Oct;
migration in action. But that's it, 11 species of shorebirds in two days.

You're really up against it when you have to be everywhere at once to look
for high-tide roosts, and of course you don't find them all, so I'm sure
there were more birds, but I certainly got no impression of ongoing
migration (the knot and dowitcher were surely on the way south).

Among the non-shorebirds, raptors made the weekend a bit richer. We saw a
pair of WHITE-TAILED KITES on 5 Oct. just W of South Bend (over the field
just W of milepost 52), and an immature RED-SHOULDERED HAWK at Bay Center.
We saw the hawk at close range on 4 Oct in the first trees along the road as
you head W into Bay Center. It flew along the line of trees to the west and
we got another great look at it perched and in flight. We left it there. On
5 Oct we looked for it briefly again but couldn't find it. There are a lot
of trees away from the road, but the alders along the road looked like good
hunting perches. We also saw a jet-propelled Merlin at the same spot and a
similarly speedy Peregrine heading down the beach at Grayland, coalescing
the small, scattered Sanderling flocks.

>From the jetty, we saw large numbers of seabirds feeding at the mouth of the
Columbia River, including perhaps as many as 8-10 Parasitic Jaegers (many of
them juveniles) and a few Black-legged Kittiwakes.

All along the coast, there were many flocks of Brandt's Cormorants moving
north, with the occasional Pelagic mixed in, and lots of Surf Scoters moving
south. Scattered around were fair numbers of Brown Pelicans and small
numbers of Common Murres. A pair of Marbled Murrelets whizzed into Grays
Harbor, to my delight. A formerly abundant bird now goes unseen on many a
trip.

Off Tokeland, there were what looked like as many as a thousand
Double-crested Cormorants feeding and flying back and forth from a roost on
a long spit to the south. There was an equally large roost on the island
east of Bill's Spit on the Ocean Shores peninsula.

Great Blue Herons were also in surprisingly large numbers, with over 100 on
the north shore of Willapa Bay and dozens in many other areas, perhaps the
largest number of this species I've ever seen in a day in Washington.
Common Loons were also surprisingly abundant in Willapa Bay, with dozens of
them off the east side of Leadbetter Point, mostly molting adults.

There were tremendous numbers of gulls, Heermann's and California the most
abundant but large numbers of Western and fewer Glaucous-winged, also a few
Herring and Mew. I was especially surprised at the numbers of Ring-billed
Gulls scattered everywhere, hundreds of them and distinctly more than there
used to be there when I was surveying the area regularly. They were
typically concentrated in their own flocks, often in a different area from
the other gulls. Another thing that interested me about the gulls was the
vanishingly small proportion of immatures among the Heermann's. I only saw a
couple of obvious first-year birds among hundreds and hundreds of adults,
also a few second-year birds. I wonder why the immatures don't come up here
- or did they have a bad breeding year?

We saw about 10 Caspian Terns at South Bend, where I've seen them before at
this time of year.

The funniest thing was two young Raccoons, presumably siblings as they kept
in close physical contact, wandering over the mudflats of Willapa Bay far
from shore. I can see them feeding in the intertidal, but they were a *long*
way from the shore. They looked muddy and disheveled, and I wondered if they
were trying to figure out where to go on their first really big trip. They
trundled past flocks of feeding Mallards, which themselves waddled out of
the way with much quacking.

Dennis Paulson
--
Netta Smith and Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115