Late this past week during two days I was able to bird two interesting shorelines in western Washington: Discovery Park, an isle of calm in Seattle along the Puget Sound, and the Westport-Tokeland-Grayland area along the outer Pacific Ocean coast.

On Friday, Oct. 26, in Discovery Park, along the north side of West Point in clear, windy-cold weather, I found ~200 Western Grebes gathered just offshore beyond the breakers. About 200 Mew Gulls were nearby along the shoreline, just below the pond, which contained 12-15 American Wigeons and 4 Mallards.

On Saturday, Oct. 27, in midday on a high tide at the Tokeland marina, I found a very large Marbled Godwit group huddled by the water's edge next to the dike on the far end of town. The birds remained here for an hour and a half, and my scan-counts (while searching futilely for a Bar-tailed Godwit) indicated at least 900 birds in the group. I moved to the cove and wetlands then on the other, outer side of town where I found 200-300 Black-bellied Plovers, ~15 Semi-palmated Plovers, and a group of ~40 Long-billed Curlews.

That evening at nearby Grayland State Park along the outer coast I found a sizable flock of Dunlins resting on the beach in a dense group where a small creek entered the ocean. Several scan-counts indicated at least 3500-5000 birds in the group. All were Dunlins except for 6 Western Sandpipers traveling with them. A flock of ~30 Sanderlings was also nearby. The Dunlin flock remained in place for over an hour (except for two brief, swirling group-flights that returned to the same spot), until an adult Bald Eagle flew by and stooped briefly at a nearby group of gulls just beyond the breakers. Earlier in the afternoon, from atop the tower at the nearby Westport marina, I also noted a massive plume of migrating shorebirds--that appeared to be thousands of plovers in the main--moving rapidly abreast across the harbor mouth from north to south toward me in a coiling, unbroken line that seemed to stretch for a mile or more as they passed.

Bruce Moorhead
Port Angeles, WA