We also visited Westport yesterday, but spent our time
at the marina, where we found 8 Rock Sandpipers and 13
Surfbirds perching in stiff wind at high tide. Dennis
Paulson had previously posted this location. Drive
all the way around the north end of the marina to the
parking lot at "Float 20", walk out the dock and over
the narrow footbridge to the breakwater/fishing pier.
The birds were perched very close on the top of the
timber breakwater at it's very north end. No Pribilof
race seen, but not all birds were well viewed.

At Midway Beach, in the mid-late afternoon, we arrived
just as Craig Kemper was leaving, reporting that he
too had seen the Snowy Plovers. We walked out onto
the beach just as several trucks, a dog, 4-5 horses
and some other beach walkers all began traversing the
area where the Snowys were reortedly seen. We saw no
Snowys or Falcons of any kind, though we did see the
large flock of Dunlin and a couple of hundred
Sanderlings in the water's edge.

Ed Kane


--- Matt Bartels <mattxyz at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Hi Tweeters-
> I spent today making a few stops along the coast.
> Only occasional
> sputters of rain interrupted an otherwise very
> pleasant day with
> little wind.
> Some of the notables -
> Westport jetty [Westport, Grays Harbor Co]
> 8:00-~10:30
> Black Turnstone 10-15
> Rock Sandpiper 1
> Surfbird 7
> Killdeer - 5 near the parking lot
> Bonaparte's Gull 1
> Pacific Loon 2
> Common Loon 1
>
>
> Midway Beach [Midway, Pacific Co] 11:00 to ~2:30
> 1 Peregrine Falcon [south of the road]
> 0 Gyrfalcon
> ~50 Snowy Plover! [see below]
> 1 Semipalmated Plover!
> 1000? Dunlin
> 200? Sanderlings
> 10-20 Western Sandpipers
> ~5 Least Sandpipers
> 1 Wilson's Snipe [south of the road, in the marshy
> area]
> 4 American Pipits
> 5 Western Meadowlarks
>
> Most all of shorebirds were north from where the
> road comes in to
> the water [nb: You can get around the 'lake' at the
> end of the road
> and out to the beach by going north a ways along the
> edge of the
> water - south doesn't work as well...]. I spent a
> long time just
> enjoying the Sanderlings & Dunlin as well as the
> constant present of
> Snowy Plovers -- my only other luck with them here
> has been in little
> trickles, never even approaching 10. Today, they
> were all over the
> place. The stayed mostly off the water a bit, but
> roughly parallel
> with the huge Dunlin flock -- not all the way back
> in the live grass,
> but rather wandering the beach and sitting amongst
> some of the
> 'drift-grass.' As an added bonus, 2 of them were
> leg-banded, so now I
> need to figure out who to report those bands to.
> Now that I look at
> my books, I guess I shouldn't be too surprised by
> the Semipalm
> Plover, but I was caught a little off-guard by its
> appearance amongst
> the others.
>
> Tokeland Marina [Tokeland, Pacific Co] 2:45 - 3:30
> Marbled Godwit [1 flock, no good estimate today]
> Willet [~15]
> LB Dowitcher [~20]
> 1 Black-bellied Plover [at Graveyard Spit, 7th St]
>
> Scattered other birds here and there as well, making
> for a very good
> day out and about.
>
> Matt Bartels
> Seattle, WA
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --


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