Subject: [Tweeters] Grays Harbor CBC(Hoquiam area)
Date: Jan 3 11:40:25 2006
From: Ruth and/or Patrick Sullivan - godwit at worldnet.att.net


Hello Tweets,

Yesterday(January 2nd)we enjoyed our 1st good birding day of 2006 conducting our personal route of the Grays Harbor CBC. Our route encompasses the entire portion of Bowerman Basin and surrounding areas extending east to the south portion of the city of Hoquiam. The preliminary count for this year's Grays Harbor CBC came to 135 species,so we felt good at getting nearly 3/4 of those species. Our day was filled with a great diverse of species that yielded 93 species and 8,520 individual birds,which was our personal best day from the 5 or so years we have been covering this route. 3 of us scoured our area well with much of the day spent of foot with nice weather conditions for the better part of the day,despite an hour and half of minor rain showers that began our day. We encountered several key highlights during the day including 9 species of raptors consisting of 42 individual birds. We did note that overall waterfowl numbers seemed to be quite down,although species were the same.

Our behavioral highlight of the day came while surveying the Hoquiam River from the K Street dike during the mid afternoon,as conditions were superb and extremely calm. It is here we heard our very first ever Red-throated Loon calling from the mouth of the Hoquiam River,where it soon attracted 2 other Red-throated Loons,which were most likely females. The bird continued to call 2 or 3 more times with the other 2 loons nearby until the all flew off and headed up the Chehalis River. It was a neat experience while it lasted and we would have never expected to hear this species calling in Washington and more or less on breeding grounds. We soon figured that the conditions were perfect due to a combination of temperature and weather. We wonder if any other birders have encountered this experience in Washington?

Our species highlights of the day within our area consisted of the following:

11 Red-throated Loons
1 Pacific Loon
1 AM.BITTERN(Bowerman Basin)
1 "Black"Brant
84 Canvasbacks
13 Northern Harriers
1 Sharp-shinned Hawk
1 Cooper's Hawk
18 Red-tailed Hawks
1 ROUGH-LEGGED HAWK
4 Merlins
12 Peregrine Falcons
12 Virginia Rails
1 SORA(heard and observed calling along the Sandpiper Trail at Bowerman Basin)
12 Black-bellied Plovers
8 SEMIPALMATED PLOVERS
37 Sanderlings
8 Western Sandpipers
24 Least Sandpipers
16 Wilson's Snipes
40 RED PHALAROPES
1 Bonaparte's Gull
1 Thayer's Gull
18 Western Gulls
1 GLAUCOUS GULL(lingering immature bird at the Hoquiam STP)
2 Great Horned Owls(last species of the day, with a pair of birds calling several times from a dense stand of Red Alder trees at Bowerman Basin)
1 Hairy Woodpecker
1 Hutton's Vireo
3 Western Scrub Jays(Hoquiam)
3 Hermit Thrushes
30 Am.Robins(extremely low count and a species we had to work hard to get)
2 Varied Thrushes
1 Townsend's Warbler
112 "Sooty"Fox Sparrows(personal high count for our area)
89 Song Sparrows
2 Lincoln's Sparrows
16 Western Meadowlarks


It was nice way to end the CBC season!



Good birding,

Ruth and Patrick Sullivan
Fircrest,WA
godwit at worldnet.att.net