Tweets,
Just got back home from a two day trip to the coast. I won't bother time
reporting all of the other birds we witnessed along with the Sullivan's,
ELWAS trip and Denny. As others have noted I was lucky/cursed depending on
how you view it to be the only person (if you don't count my wife who is
only a novice birder) to see a juv. RUFF at Midway beach early in the
morning on Saturday 8-25. We arrived at the beach shortly before 9 in the
morning, noting nothing at the pond next to the entrance road. I walked
south along the beach, picking up one adult SNOWY PLOVER about 3/4 mile
south of the entrance road. As I headed back towards the pond I watched a
group of yellowlegs fly towards the pond area. The group was too far out to
notice if this contained the ruff at this time. I approached the pond and
noticed 3 LESSER YELLOWLEGS and a RUFF all feeding in the pond. My wife and
daughter were nearby and I got the camera from them, in addition to showing
my wife the RUFF. I took our little digital camera which does not match up
well at all with my KOWA TSN-4 to try some photos of the RUFF. To say they
were of poor quality is to be very nice. I will try to download them
tomorrow night and see if I can use anything of them. The birds were
starting acting very nervous after about 15 minutes and flew off shortly,
heading SE towards the trees and the highway. Details of the bird, largish
warm buff colored shorebird, slightly larger than the nearby yellowlegs.
Yellow legs present on the bird, breast and head was a warm buff color, with
an all black straight blunt bill. The back had a heavy silver scaling
quality. The bird moved quickly along the pond, picking at the water in a
hurried fashion. It would be great if the bird would return, I checked later
in the day and ran into the Sullivan's. The pond was covered with people and
the only shorebirds were 4 red-necked phalaropes.

Today the main highlight was a stop at Bill's Spit at high tide. About 800
Western Sandpipers were present, along with 100 Least Sandpiper, about 50
Semi-palmated Plover, 2 Baird's Sandpiper and 2 SEMI-PALMATED SANDPIPER. One
a juvenile bird, the other an adult almost in full Alternate plumage. In
addition to the shorebirds, a lone GREATER-WHITE FRONTED GOOSE was present.

Off to catch my breath before waking up at 4:00 am for work...

Scott Downes
downess at charter.net
Yakima WA