Thanks to Dave and Dan for comments. The flocks looked big to me as a
newcomer to Pacific NW birding, so it's good to get your historical
perspective. Yes, I heard Steve Scher's interview of biologist Julia Parrish
re Puget Sound seabirds (KUOW "Weekday" show, Monday, 2 Apr, 9-10 a.m.).
Superb! Folks can hear it on web by clicking on KUOW archives.

Here's a plug for Steve Scher's Weekday show. He often features
environmental and natural resource issues. For whatever the subject is, he
secures top-notch experts (local or from all over the continent). Steve is
one of the most thoughtful, knowledgeable, and, in a word, effective,
interviewers you ever heard. His command of ecology is amazing.

Ray
----- Original Message -----
From: "dave templeton" <crazydave65 at inbox.com>
To: <dfroehli at u.washington.edu>; <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Cc: "Ray White" <rw at seanet.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2007 6:31 AM
Subject: RE: [Tweeters] Western Grebe flocks


additional relevant info *may* exist in the discussion on kuow's weekday
yesterday (apr 2) first hour (9am). their recap of the hour appears below.
i don't know if there are written transcripts or if you have to listen to
the whole hour. i heard bits and pieces of it and there were listener
questions about dwindling bird populations.

regards,

t

crazydave65atinboxdotcom

What's Killing Puget Sound Seabirds?
RealAudio

MP3: High Low
The mystery: hundreds of seabirds are turning up dead up and down the West
Coast. Scientists want to know why. We'll speak to one of the researchers
about common murres, auklets and other birds. What do seabirds tell us about
the state of the Puget Sound and our environment?


Guests:
Dr. Julia Parrish is seabird researcher at the University of Washington. She
founded the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team (COASST) and studies
a number of birds including the common murres of Tatoosh Island ? the last
remaining breeding colony in Washington State.

Related Events:
Dr. Parrish is speaking Thursday, April 5th at REI at 7:00 p.m. as a part of
People For Puget Sound's series Keeping Our Sound Alive. Admission is $6 for
People For Puget Sound members; $8 for non?members. Tickets may be purchased
in advance by calling (206)382?7007.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: dfroehli at u.washington.edu
> Sent: Tue, 3 Apr 2007 02:17:39 -0700 (PDT)
> To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
> Subject: [Tweeters] Western Grebe flocks
>
> Quick response to Ray White's query on grebe flocks:
>
> Ray asked if his observations of Western Grebe rafts totalling 900 birds
> in Penn Cove and 350 birds at
> Discovery Park mitigate my concern over possibly dwindling numbers.
>
> At this point, I have only anecdotal evidence, but the anecdotes don't
> look good. My impression is that
> the number of large rafts (over 100 birds) has dwindled precipitously
> over the past ten years. There
> used to be many such flocks, now the few Ray identified are not
> supplemented by so many others. I
> have been unable to locate any sizable flocks at various spots between
> Everett and Bellingham, nor
> have I found good numbers around the S end of Whidbey Island. What about
> between Seattle and
> Olympia? Vashon Island, West Seattle & Bainbridge have had flocks in
> past years. But the numbers just
> don't seem close to numbers like 26,000 on Bellingham's 1991 CBC or
> 40,000 in Feb 1969 in
> Bellingham Bay.
>
> This may be a classic case of "shifting baselines" (see
> http://www.actionbioscience.org/environment/
> olson.html). As the environment slowly changes, we set arbitrary
> baselines in our minds, usually
> related to our own experience, on what is "normal" or reasonable for
> population numbers. Rafts of 400
> Western Grebes seem like good-size rafts now, but in fact they bear
> little resemblance to what our local
> waters supported not even a generation ago.
>
> Western grebes contrast with Red-necked Grebes in their winter
> distribution in Puget Sound: Westerns
> tend to lump into somewhat dense cohesive aggregations that used to
> number in the thousands. Red-
> necks keep their distance from each other and never seem to aggregate
> into cohesive flocks. Gary
> Shugart suggests that this is related to their diet: while Western
> Grebes chase schooling baitfish, red-
> necks forage on bottom-dwelling flatfish. There may be different
> population trajectories for their prey
> affecting current trends of predators differently. What if there are
> threshold effects, such that smaller
> flocks of grebes hunt less efficiently (per individual) than larger
> flocks, even aside from the effects of
> changes in prey population densities?
>
> I worry that Western Grebe numbers are collapsing under our very noses
> while the best data we have is
> the winter snapshot that CBC counts provide. Wouldn't it be great to
> harness the skills and record-
> keeping obsession of the tweeters membership to target monitoring at
> species of current concern?
> Such tools are already used in the form of ebird records, but on a
> regional level, such observations
> could be more focused. I'll keep you posted as we think about how to set
> this up.
>
> Best,
>
> Dan
>
>
>
> Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2007 10:03:50 -0700
> From: Ray White <rw at seanet.com>
> To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
> Subject: [Tweeters] Western Grebe rafts, Penn Cove, Whidbey Island
>
> March 30, about 2 p.m. -- Two large rafts of Western Grebes in Penn Cove.
> Seen from Madrona (Drive?). One raft contained roughly 420-450 birds
> (estimate made by counting 30 on one side, then sequentially applying the
> area that they covered as a template on the rest of the raft. The other
> raft appeared to be of about the same size.
>
> A recent Tweeters posting lamented poor abundance of Western Grebes in
> Puget Sound this spring, compared with previous years. Do my observations
> of rafts off Seattle's Discovery Park (about 350 birds in total) on March
> 28 and the rafts in Penns Cove (800-900 birds in total) change that
> impression? Of course, these could have been the same flocks, which had
> moved 70 miles north and maybe picked up more birds. Are the flocks still
> present at Discovery Park?
>
> Ray White
> Edmonds, WA
> 425-672-8268
>
> ******************************
> Daniel Froehlich
> Burke Museum, U. of Washington
> Box 353010
> Seattle, WA 98195-3010
> 206-595-2305
> ******************************
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Tweeters mailing list
> Tweeters at u.washington.edu
> http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/tweeters

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