Thanks to Lonnie's posting of yesterday, I was encouraged to go out to
Woodard Bay Conservation Area this afternoon. On my visits there in
June and July I had seen few or no Purple Martin, and no evidence of
nesting.

This afternoon I saw four females carrying food to their nest boxes,
and one male perched atop a piling sunning itself. It's very likely
there are five active nests as Lonnie reported; the level of activity
today was very low, with infrequent transits by the females.

Also seen here:
65 Double-crested Cormorant perched atop pilings
2 Belted Kingfisher (Chapman Bay, Woodard Bay)
7 Great Blue Heron (others heard in rookery
and the ubiquitous, grunting Harbor Seals

For those of you unfamiliar with the area, Woodard Bay Conservation
Area (Wash. Dept of Natural Resources) is a former Weyerhaeuser
property and log dump embracing portions of Woodard and Chapman bays.
The Purple Martin nest boxes (about 80 of them) are attached to the
pilings in the old Weyerhaeuser log rafting area in the Chapman Bay
mouth. A 2.2-mile road-trail loop accesses the Chapman Bay mouth from
the trail head at the Woodard Bay Road bridge.

On 3 Aug 2008 at 22:16, wheelermombi at comcast.net wrote:

From: wheelermombi at comcast.net
To: tweeters at u.washington.edu (Tweeters)
Date sent: Sun, 03 Aug 2008 22:16:28 +0000
Subject: [Tweeters] Woodard Bay purple martins

> Hi Tweeters,
>
> I hiked out to Woodard Bay, Thurston County today with my wife and my
> friend Mark (a non-birding type). Nothing unexpected was spotted, but
> I just wanted to pass along that the Purple Martin boxes were hosting
> several pairs. I did not try to get an accurate count, but it was my
> impression that there were at least 5 active pairs coming and going.
> I also counted more than 200 Harbor Seals, including several pups,
> hauled out on the platforms in the bay. Several more were swimming
> about in the water. They were very vocal. It also seemed like each
> post in the water had a D-C Cormorant perched on top. A very pleasant
> place to picnic.
>
> I also birded the coast yesterday with non-birder Mark. Lots of
> Caspian Gulls, but no Elegants, despite my best efforts to turn the
> juvenile Caspians into them. I was at Tokeland during high tide, so
> all of the godwits were hunkered down on the distant jetty. This
> morning I read Charlie Wright's post about the Hudsonian Godwit that
> he saw, and am driving everyone here crazy by kvetching and moaning
> that I didn't get there a few hours earlier. Life is cruel.
>
> Good birding,
>
> Lonnie Somer
> Olympia, WA
> wheelermombi at comcast.net


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Douglas Canning
Black Lake, Thurston Co., Wash.
dcanning at zhonka.net
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