Greetings Tweeters,

Spent the better part of the day today at Ocean Shores today. The weather
was pretty stormy and the birding was tough, with strong winds and rain.
The best strategy proved to be waiting out the rain and wind at Point Brown
Jetty, then looking south and west as the opportunity allowed. I had some
decent windows between 1030 and 1:00. The best bird was a Leach's Storm
Petrel, in close and working hard to get back out to sea. The next probably
goes to the Snow Bunting that showed up briefly then moved on. There was a
brief period with a several tubenoses including one very intriguing one that
I just could not get good looks at. Birds I did get reasonable looks at
included 3 dark shearwaters, that I believe were Short-tails, one Northern
Fulmar and 2 Black-legged Kittiwakes. Lots of gulls, but nothing out of the
ordinary there. There was 1 White-fronted Goose and one Cackler at the
Cabana Pool parking lot that looked like they were just trying to get a
little shelter from the weather. By the way there were thousands of Velella
washed up in the strand line. They were catching the interest of the Gulls
and Sanderlings. A washed up Northern Fulmar was there as well. On the way
back I stopped by the Hoquium Swage Pond. A nice, full yellow-shafted type
Northern Flicker was the best bird there. It was in the vicinity of the
wildlife refuge buildings and right along the road.

Good birding,
Bill Shelmerdine
Mail to:georn1 at hotmail.com

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