Subject: Ocean Shores 5/23
Date: May 23 21:26:19 2003
From: Stuart MacKay - stuart at blarg.net


It's amazing what you see when you hang around the Ocean Shores STP all
day waiting for some decent light to photograph the phalaropes reported
earlier in the week by the Sullivans:

4-6 red-necked phalaropes, 4 birds stayed all day (2 males, 2 females).
3 of the birds were oiled. 1 rather badly on the lower belly the other
two around face otherwise they were clean suggesting they managed to
preen it off.

15 greater scaup (6 females, 9 males)
12 northern shovelor (11 males, 1 female)
1 male lesser scaup
1 male northern pintail
1 male american wigeon
16 mallard (14 males. 2 females)
2 blue-winged teal (1 male, 1 female)

1 male snow bunting
1 male yellow headed blackbird
5 long-billed dowitchers
2 short-billed dowitchers
2 spotted sandpipers
1 bald eagle
2 canada geese standing on the roof of a nearby house !


At the Point Brown Jetty

13 wandering tatlers

large numbers of rhinocerous auklets and murres feeding in dense rafts
off the tip of the Westport jetty and into the mouth of Grays Harbor
3 parasitic jaegers flying north
31 common terns flying north
6 juv. black-legged kittiwakes flying north
several gray whales
lots of seals and sea-lions


Stuart
--
Stuart MacKay, Seattle, WA, USA