Subject: [Tweeters] Hidden Shorebirds
Date: Aug 29 07:04:31 2009
From: Richard Carlson - rccarl at pacbell.net


Having been spoiled by 40 years of shorebirding on San Francisco Bay, where the only problem is finding the rarities among the thousands of birds, Ocean Shores drives me nuts. So where do the shorebirds hide?? Last Wed, Aug. 26, about two hours before high tide, I tried the Tonquin Rd entrance to the Game Range and came up with 3 Dowitchers & 1 Yellowlegs. The large water tank beach had nothing. On the ocean front, the jetty had zero shorebirds. Finally, at the Driftwood Beach I found a few hundred Sanderlings in one concentrated group. My wife begged to skip another smelly trip to the sewage treatment plant where I know we would have seen onesies of Western, Least etc. Marvin Hoekstra had the same limited luck.

So what's going on? Where do the allegedly large flocks of other shorebirds hide in that area or do they just move through and not hang around?

Richard Carlson
Full-time Birder, Biker and Rotarian
Part-time Economist
Tucson, AZ, Lake Tahoe, CA, & Kirkland, WA
rccarl at pacbell.net
Tucson 520-760-4935
Tahoe 530-581-0624
Kirkland 425-828-3819
Cell 650-280-2965