Hi all,

At about noon today the HUDSONIAN GODWIT found by Charlie Wright
yesterday made an appearance amongst the 350 Marbled Godwits in
Tokeland. As Charlie described, it is a molting adult. Its small size,
grayish appearance, and bold supercillium help distinguish it from
nearby Marbled Godwits. Although the easiest way to detect it is in
flight with its black tail, white rump, black underwings with white wing
stripe.

Another highlight today was seven! juvenile SEMIPALMATED SANDPIPERS at
Midway Beach - an Interesting number for the coast!

I spent the last three days at the coast with my Dad, Ross, and George
Gerdts and Jamie Acker. We enjoyed a Westport Seabirds pelagic trip on
Saturday with good weather and nice seas. Although we didn't find any of
real rarities, the trip produced a good diversity of species including
both expected storm-petrels, good looks at all three jaegers, two South
Polar Skuas, Arctic Terns, Sabine's Gulls, and plenty of fulmars,
shearwaters (Sooty and Pink-foot), and Black-footed Albatrosses. I will
likely need to pay an additional fee on my next trip as I may be the
first customer to have Captain Phil Anderson stop the boat because of a
budweiser beer can 30 miles out. I really did think it was some weird alcid!

Although we tried several spots multiple times between Westport and
Tokeland, we struck-out on finding any Elegant Terns. This included a
Graveyard Spit visit 30 minutes after Rolan Nelson had his three. Oh
well, I guess timing is everything. Congrats to Rolan for # 600.

We also had the molting alternate plumaged PACIFIC GOLDEN-PLOVER on
Friday at Bottle Beach. This bird could likely be one of the two
photographed by Ruth Sullivan back on July 19??. It should be noted that
the trail bridge is in the middle of construction (it doesn't exist) so
it was a little bit of a scramble crossing the stream to get to the beach.

It was a fun three days of birding.

Cheers and good birding,
Brad Waggoner
Bainbridge Island
mailto:wagtail at sounddsl.com