Good work Mike,

We now have a more complete picture of the recent wreck than we would
have otherwise.

David

Mike Patterson wrote:

>I spent the morning walking selected beaches on the Long Beach
>Penisula to get a quantitative sense of how the recent alcid
>wreck looked from north of the Columbia River.
>
>First I walked the beach at Beards Hollow (a little over 2km as
>measured by GPS). The beached bird count was fairly light with
>one of everything. Except as noted almost everything was in the
>wetline suggesting that it was deposited recently.
>
>Birds seen (in taxonomic order):
>
>Western Grebe 1
>Northern Fulmar 1
>Glaucous-winged Gull 1 [1]
>Black-legged Kittiwake 1 [2]
>Rhinoceros Auklet 1
>Horned Puffin 1
>Tufted Puffin 1 [3]
>
>Footnotes:
>
>[1] Up in the high wrack line, looked old
>[2] On the beach in between the wetline and the high wrack, probably
> old.
>[3] Very fresh looking
>
>
>I then drove to Klipsan Beach and walked 1km north then 1km south of
>the beach access for total coverage of another 2km of beach front.
>Going north the clustered in the first 500meters and also clustered in
>the southmost 500meters going south. Again most birds were found on
>the wetline, indicating recent deposition.
>
>Also of note was a flock of 800 LEAST SANDPIPERS and a few SEMIPALMATED
>PLOVERS roosting on the beach.
>
>deceased bird noted (in taxonomic order):
>
>Western Grebe 1 [1]
>Northern Fulmar 2 [2]
>Western Gull 2 [3]
>Glaucous-winged Gull 2 [4]
>Common Murre 1 [5]
>Rhinoceros Auklet 19
>Horned Puffin 4
>Tufted Puffin 2
>
>Footnotes:
>
>[1] high wrack, very old
>[2] 1 in wetline; 1 in high wrack
>[3] both in high wrack; old
>[4] 1 in wetline; old one in high wrack
>[5] no head, TBMU eliminated based on covert color and details of
> the wing linings.
>
>Total number of species seen: 8
>
>
>