Dear Tweeters,
On August 21, Howard Armstrong and I saw a surprising
sight from the DNR park on Samish Island. In the
evening, close to high tide, about 2000 or more
shorebirds were flying hither and thither, way out in
the bay. We watched them for about twenty minutes.
They first appeared way to the north, in Bellingham
Bay, on a line from the park to a point north of (left
of) a distant refinery (?)up in Whatcom County. The
birds were flying in a tight flock, right at the
surface of the water. Maddeningly, they would work
their way south, then all of a sudden go into a
reversal and go north again. They did this again and
again, but their overall movement took them
southwards. After about twenty minutes, they had made
about five or six miles of progress. We could not tell
what they were. Our best guess was Western Sandpiper,
although we don't remember seeing such a horde of
Westerns in our area. The birds seemed to be small.
They showed white below, and we figured there would be
black visible below on many Dunlins this time of year;
it seems too early for Dunlin, anyway. The upperparts
of the birds seemed to be light brownish. We were
looking at them with scopes from a mile or two away,
though, at best.

Any ideas?

We had a good day of birding, by the way. In the
morning we found the Northern Waterthrush at the Game
Range. At Channel Drive we found one Short-billed
Dowitcher, accompanied by a handul of Lesser
Yellowlegs. There were about fifty Least Sandpipers
and one or two Semipalmated Sandpipers there, plus
three Spotted Sandpipers. At Green Point we found our
first Heermann's Gull of the year, but both that spot
and the Samish Island spot were fairly slow for
seabirds. At the West Ninety we found three Virginia
Rails (one juvenile, two adults) in the pond closest
to the parking area.

A Solitary Sandpiper has been making occasional visits
to the little pond just west of Lyman (Skagit County),
the east side of the little causeway, State Route 20
mile marker 73.8 or so.




Yours truly,

Gary Bletsch

near Lyman (Skagit County), Washington

garybletsch at yahoo.com


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