Something of a mixed day today out in Gray's Harbor Co. I started at the
Brady Loop at 9am, and found one of the Eurasian collared doves beneath
the feeder at the grey house at the northeast corner as previously
described. Most of the fields are now dry, and I didn't find a single
shorebird anywhere, nor did I see those ever-frustrating barnacle geese!
I only found two small flocks of Canada geese for the entire loop. One
osprey at the nest, another looking rather incongruous sitting in the
ploughed field opposite.

Next stop was Bottle Beach - it was still a little over two hours before
high tide, and there were shorebirds spread everywhere. Dunlin,
black-bellied plover, semipalmated sandpipers, dowitchers and two
whimbrel were easy to pick out, plus thousands of peeps still too far
out to speciate. I headed off to Westport marina which was very quiet -
a few common loons and pigeon guillemots were about it apart from the
gulls. I saw ONE pelagic cormorant, and another that was probably
Brandt's. No pelicans, no rockpipers.

I returned to Bottle Beach with still roughly an hour to high tide, and
that water had really moved! The tideline was higher than I'd expected
from the tide data, and although many birds had left, there were great
looks and good photos for those hundreds remaining, including briefly
one whimbrel. All the peeps still present were western, not a least in
sight despite much scoping, and the dowitchers were proven to be
short-billed.

Off then to Gray's Harbor NWR, where the pattern repeated - thousands of
shorebirds, but every peep I scoped was a western, and otherwise the
birds were dunlin and semipalmated sandpipers. Barely a bird around
bigger than a dunlin - there were two lesser yellowlegs at the southern
tip and I found one black turnstone working over a driftwood log. No red
knots, no dowitchers, no godwits - the park warden I chatted to there
was surprised by the poor species diversity with the numbers.

There were a couple of Caspian tern at both Bottle Beach and Gray's
Harbor NWR. There was also one white goose with black primaries in the
marshy area by the road past the hangars at Gray's Harbor, associating
with a small flock of Canada geese. It was almost permanently walking
away from me, so I couldn't check the beak well enough to say for sure
whether it was snow or Ross's, but it was much smaller than the
Canada's. I'd appreciate an update on this bird if anyone got a better
view.

I had 52 species for the day with a number of passerines and a few
straggling ducks. I'll expect the rest of the shorebirds to put on a
better showing next time I'm out that way!

Louise Rutter
Kirkland

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