Subject: [Tweeters] Coastal Birding 9/2, 9/3
Date: Sep 4 11:58:41 2005
From: Scott Downes - downess at charter.net


Tweets,
Spent two days birding the Sequim/Port Angeles area and the Ocean
Shores/Tokeland area with Nancy Ladenberger. Nothing extraordinary but some
notable observations. On Friday started out at Ediz Hook in Port Angeles,
very good gull numbers with most of the birds being either Heermann's,
California or Thayer's Gulls. Rough estimates would be about 900-1000
Heermann's, 8-900 California and 300 Thayer's. At the base of the hook (at
the shipping yard where the eider was hanging out last summer) had an
exceptionally pale young Thayer's. This bird was as pale and some Iceland
Gulls, yet head shape, primary coloration and other factors put this bird
squarely in the Thayer's category.
In Sequim, hit the 3 crabs area and started what would be a general weekend
trend, lack of shorebird numbers. While some were present, notably, 4
MARBLED GODWITS (including a very pale one that made us look twice hoping
for Bar-tailed) and a SEMIPALMATED SANDPIPER; overall less than 100 peeps,
no Baird's or Pectoral and only a few species present. Duck numbers were
good with a large flock of American Wigeon present signaling the start of
fall waterfowl progression.
Saturday (yesterday) hit the Ocean Shores and Tokeland area, day started out
decently with a female REDHEAD at the Hoquiam STP in the morning and good
numbers of Seabirds passing by the Westport Jetty including good numbers of
Pacific Loons, all 3 species of Scoter and large northward passing of Sooty
Shearwaters at the rate of about 50-75 per minute. Rock shorebirds included
both Surfbird, Black Turnstone and 2 Wandering Tattlers at the base of the
jetty. Unfortunately other areas in Ocean Shores were not nearly as
productive...
Damon Point was fairly busy with people and nearly devoid of shorebirds.
Shorebird totals from an hour plus on the spit were 15-20 Sanderling, 10-15
Western Sandpiper, 2 Least Sandpiper, 2 Whimbrel and 1 Black-bellied Plover.
Bill's Spit while good for gull numbers, offered 0 shorebirds at 45 minutes
before high tide... the gull numbers again were mostly GW-Western complex
birds, Caly and Heermann's.
Tokeland had a decent number of large shorebirds resting at high tide, ~300
Marbled Godwits, 3 Whimbrels, 14 Willets. Try as I might no other godwits
could be pulled from the flock, though there was a light immature Marbled in
this flock. All in all for the day a paltry 13 species of shorebirds for
early September with only small numbers of any one species. Our last hope
for shorebirds was at Bottle beach about 4:00 and the mudflats had only 6 or
so peeps, too far out for ID, not even a killdeer!
Stopped by North Cove on our way to Bottle Beach and while decent gull
numbers (~1500 birds), about 85% were Caly and Heermann's with smaller
numbers of Mew, GWxW and Ring-billed. For the day only 89 species, not
exactly a bountiful total.
An enjoyable couple of days but hopefully the numbers pick up for the coming
weeks in that area.

Good birding all.

Scott Downes
downess at charter.net
Yakima WA