Gary, Wayne, Gene, Rachel & all,

I was glad to see Rachel's post about the "abundance" of Ancient Murrelets
on a recent Coho trip. At least they are being seen somewhere. My experience
lately from the shores of Bainbridge Island and other spots in Kitsap County
have yielded the same results as Gary at Rosario Head and Gene along the
shores of King County - no Ancient Murrelets to be found. In the past two
years at this time of year I have had a fairly easy time locating them in
local waters either by scanning off of Point no Point or by taking my boat
off of the east-side of Bainbridge Island. I discussed Ancient Murrelets
with Vic Nelson of Point no Point on Wednesday and he has only seen them
once this season and I believe he said it was only a few birds.

This discussion motivated me to try a boat search this morning from
Restoration Point, Bainbridge island up to north of the Kingston Ferry Dock.
I did not find any Ancient Murrelets. As with some earlier trips this Fall,
I did find some nice "rips" off of Jeff Head with some bird activity
including about 20 Common Murres, roughly 80 Bonaparte's Gulls, a couple
hundred Mew Gulls and a few California Gulls and Glaucous-winged Gulls. Once
again Jeff Head proved to be the "birdiest" spot on the trip. I saw about 20
additional Common Murres and 4 Rhinoceros Auklets at other locations along
my route and added one adult Herring Gull and one adult Thayer's Gull at a
spot where a Sea Lion was tossing around a salmon.

Perhaps these things go in cycles, but there really does seem to be a lack
of alcids in the Central Sound at this time.

Brad Waggoner
Bainbridge Island, WA
mailto:wagtail at sounddsl.com