Hello Tweeters --

Well, it took me a while, but I finally got my binocs in gear and
headed up your way to look for this famous Black-tailed Gull and its
neighbor the Bar-tailed Godwit. My thanks to the Sullivans and
others who have posted updates on these birds, which are helpful to
those of us who are, uh, a little slow. (... and those of us who
pick the most miserably rainy day of all to finally make the trip!)

The Gull afforded very satisfactory looks at North Cove from at least
3-3:30 pm, although had not been there earlier in the afternoon.

At Tokeland I had a fascinating 2-3-hour study of Marbled Godwits and
all the variation individuals can show. I decided that if you could
take each of the most extreme field marks from the most abberrant
individuals out of a flock of 500, and could hypothetically put them
all together into one individual of your own making, you could
manufacture a pretty good facsimile of a Bar-tailed Godwit. But over
all this time I found no bird I could call a real live Bar-tailed
Godwit. A visiting birder from Alberta and others who spent time
with the godwits at other times likewise found no Bar-tailed as far
as I'm aware. So perhaps it's moved on ... or perhaps like the
Whimbrels that the Alberta birder saw for just a while and then
vanished, it spent the day out of sight somewhere.

At Bottle Beach I could locate no Pac Golden Plovers; bird density
there seemed only moderate.

I look forward to another visit one of these days soon ... preferably
when it's a little less rainy. : )
Good birding,

Jay Withgott
Portland, OR
withgott at comcast.net
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