Subject: [Tweeters] Coastal birds, big flocks, 8/22-8/24/08
Date: Sep 1 16:54:21 2008
From: FRANK BROWN - franklauriebrown at msn.com



I was lucky to go out on the outstanding 8/23/08 Westport Seabirds pelagic, described in another Tweeters message. Book-ending that remarkable day were:

8/22, Midway Beach, 32 red-necked phalaropes, 14 least sandpipers, 7 semipalmated plovers, 2 up close juvenile Baird's sanpipers, a still bright red knot, short-billed dowitchers, and great views of a pectoral sandpiper - all at the parking area pond.

8/22, Tokeland, well over 500 marbled godwits (I counted 492 and gave up), a willet, 2 American pipits, and a fly by horned lark.

8/23, on the Westport jetty, 6 surfbirds and a wandering tattler, 70 marbled godwits, and 500+ brown pelicans.

8/23, on the Ocean Shores beach, at Ocean Lake Way, three whirling flocks of sanderlings, each with more than 1,000 birds, and an amazing (to me!) flock of 740 black-bellied plovers also flying in a whirling shorebird flock, and then later, at dusk settling in for the night up above the drfitwood line. Wow - a solid half mile of plovers.

8/24, at the Hoquiam wastewater treatment ponds, 20 red-necked phalaropes, and a 300+ migrating flock of barn swallows.

Frank Brown
Seattle, WA