Subject: [Tweeters] Migrant Killdeer and Gulls on N. Olympic Peninsula
Date: Sep 26 14:32:56 2006
From: Bruce Moorhead - bruceb at olypen.com
On Sat. 9/23, I counted at least 75 Killdeer scattered across a newly ploughed 5-acre field on John Willits' Bell Farm, near the mouth of the Dungeness River. Don't know when I've seen so many, so concentrated, so close to me; assumed they were passage birds. Found it interesting also how hard they were to count accurately, with 10X binocs, until each "revealed" itself by moving: think of a stop-move ballet of small, cryptically colored birds with tan-white, zebra-like markings spaced across a beige stage.
Also, while biking (without my binocs) this morning 9/26 on Ediz Hook road, around outer Port Angeles harbor, I passed beneath 100+ Heerman Gulls flying onshore just above me toward two very large groupings of gulls (thousands no doubt) atop two large log booms near the base of the spit in the P.A. harbor. Having been up north recently in B.C., it occurred to me that such large contingents of Heermanns like this now may be northerly arrivals from places around the Campbell (if they in fact get that far) and Fraser River mouths, respectively, on Vancouver Island and B.C. mainland. Need to checkout these log boom gull raftings more closely with a scope ASAP, since such large gull massings are most usually California Gulls just arrived from inland places to east. But there seem to be a lot of Heermanns now as well this year.
Bruce Moorhead
Port Angeles, WA
bruceb at olypen.com