Hi Tweets,

Our trip to the Long Beach Peninsula from Wednesday Wednesday 3/13 through Friday 3/15 wasn't primarily for birding, and except for Wednesday afternoon the cool weather varied between rain and showers with occasional clearing. On Friday Barbara and I dodged rain showers and put up with generally unpleasant late-winter weather as we birded along Willapa Bay and the Naselle River Valley. We had two good finds -- a Northern Shrike (our first in Pacific County in several years) on Parpala Rd northwest of Naselle, and a Clark's Grebe (a Pacific County first for us) in the Palix River near Bay Center. One of the highlights for us was the display put on near dusk Thursday evening at a feeder in Ilwaco by up to 8 Rufous and Anna's Hummingbirds.

Wednesday afternoon Barbara found Sanderlings, some in spring colors, molting Black-bellied Plovers, and Dunlin still in winter plumage on the beach near the peninsula's 306th St access. In the last week we've seen a few Tree and Violet-green Swallows in both Pacific and Wahkiakum Counties, though the bad weather kept nearly all of them down yesterday. The most common bird of the day was the American Robin, perhaps as many as 1,000 birds. The relatively deep water of the Palix River offers good foraging for waterfowl in all but the lowest tides. At about the mid-point on the rising afternoon tide yesterday we found 10 Common Loons, 11 Western, 1 Clark's, and 6 Horned Grebes, plus 8 Red-breasted Mergansers, and lots of Mallards and American Wigeon near the river's far edge. Near the mouth of the North River on the north shore of Willapa Bay 8 Greater Yellowlegs were feeding more or less together, and a flock of some 500 Canada Geese in a meadow a mile east of Tokeland was accompanied by 6 Black-bellied Plovers. At the Tokeland Marina shortly after five p.m. the roughly 500 Marbled Godwits were already hunkered down out of the wind, while a half-dozen Willets and 20-plus Dunlin foraged on the shoreline.

We still had about an hour of light left at 5:30 p.m., but the weather was unpleasant enough that we took refuge for dinner at the Tokeland Hotel before returning to Seattle.

50 total species:
Common Loon
Pied-billed Grebe
Horned Grebe
Western Grebe
Clark's Grebe,
Great Blue Heron
Cackling Goose
Canada Goose
American Wigeon
Green-winged Teal
Mallard
Ring-necked Duck
Lesser Scaup
Bufflehead
Red-breasted Merganser
Common Merganser
Bald Eagle
Red-tailed Hawk
American Kestrel
Ring-necked Pheasant
American Coot
Black-bellied Plover
Killdeer
Marbled Godwit
Willet
Sanderling
Dunlin
Ring-billed gull
Glaucous-winged Gull
Western Gull
Rock Pigeon
Anna's Humminigbird
Rufous Hummingbird
Northern Flicker
Violet-green Swallow
Winter Wren
Marsh Wren
American Robin
Chestnut-backed Chickadee
Red-breasted Nuthatch
Northern Shrike
Steller's Jay
American Crow
Common Raven
European Starling
Spotted Towhee
Song Sparrow
Dark-eyed Junco
Red-winged Blackbird
Brewer's Blackbird

Barbara and Paul Webster
Seattle
paul.websterATcomcast.net