Subject: [Tweeters] birds seen on boat trip out of LaConner
Date: Mar 27 09:13:08 2005
From: Gary Bletsch - garybletsch at yahoo.com


Dear Tweeters,

Despite blustery winds, intermittent showers, and some
fairly high swells, Skagit Audubon members and guests
enjoyed good birding aboard the Viking Star yesterday
(3-26-05).

Highlights included several hundred Rhinoceros
Auklets, several goodly flocks of Black Turnstones,
and a Surfbird. The latter was on Williamson's Rocks,
north of Rosario Head. In Skagit Bay were over 450
Western Grebes, along with a few Red-breasted and
Horned Grebes in breeding plumage. Near Cypress Island
were 180 Surf Scoters and 7 Harlequin Ducks. A female
Harlequin was perched on a hawser stretching from a
salmon pen to a buoy.

Goodly numbers of Brandt's Cormorants were in breeding
plumage, while some Pelagic Cormorants already seem to
be losing their white flank patches. The latter
species was observed at a nesting colony on a sea
cliff on Guemes Island. Only a very few Common Murres
and Marbled Murrelets were seen on the trip, and Brant
numbers were also low.

The nasty weather had our hopes up that some odd
seabird might come blowing along in the gale, but
nothing out of the ordinary turned up.

Upriver, also in Skagit County, a Savannah Sparrow at
Rasar State Park was the first one I have seen this
spring away from the coast. Large numbers of American
Robins were flying around the sodden pastures around
this park, but there was little other evidence of
springtime birdlife there.




Yours truly,

Gary Bletsch

near Lyman (Skagit County), Washington

garybletsch at yahoo.com


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