Spent Saturday birding Whidbey Island and Samish Flats. Nothing super rare, but a few nice highlights thought I'd share.

In Penn Cove had a CLARK'S GREBE amongst the Westerns. Large groups of seabirds on the westward side of the island at places like Fort Casey, Fort Ebey, Hastie Lake Rd and Swantown, though despite best efforts couldn't find anything unusual. Good numbers of all three common loons, with red-throated dominating the numbers. Tried to pull out of Yellow-billed, but alas no luck. Must all be gathered around the Port Townsend area. Good numbers of Marbled Murrelets around, about 50 plus for the day with only a couple small groups of Ancient Murrelets viewed off of Fort Casey and Hastie Lake Rd. Also good concentration of Long-tailed Duck, between all stops I estimated about 80 birds.

During the late afternoon I toured through the Samish flats and stopped at the West 90. At the West 90 had an impressive flight of Short-eared Owls flying. Doing a quick scan I could see 13 separate owls (some in groups of 3 or 4 interacting with each other) up at once. I'm fairly sure not all owls were up at once, so a conservative estimate of 15 or so was counted. Quite impressive even for the West-90. On Bayview Edison road, south of Field road I had an adult Peregrine perched and the nice treat here was a blackbird flock that produced a female RUSTY BLACKBIRD.

Weather was good for most of the day and a very nice change from late fall eastern Washington birding!

Scott Downes
downess at charter.net
Yakima WA